


a divine remedy

by aftersome



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Smut, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Canon Compliant, Political Alliances, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, arranged marriage au but they're yearning for different people, atsumu character study of sorts, mentions of infidelity but it's not the main plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 00:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 60,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30114486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aftersome/pseuds/aftersome
Summary: Atsumu doesn't know if he wants to kill Kiyoomi or kiss him.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 174





	a divine remedy

**Author's Note:**

> what is it with me and sakuatsu enemies to lovers fics? it's a pattern i noticed recently on my skts projects (both existing and upcoming) and honestly you can't blame me. there's just something about them being at odds with each other before ultimately succumbing to their desires that's appealingly sexc to me. 
> 
> i'll be honest: this project is something i created out of spite (for my older works that i'm not particularly fond of) and it's not exactly how i envisioned the whole thing, as i had been constantly modifying details as i wrote, but i would be lying if i said i wasn't proud of the outcome. and i hope that you, too, will come to like it as i did.
> 
> [here's the playlist for this fic](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7JI64YAF19j0GFN0NMThCQ?si=YTFGoZTHRxGacC96I6LdMg&utm_source=copy-link)

But as the world itself will tell you, 

something put in motion will not stop.

— _Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six_

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  


The world is blood-red when Atsumu wakes. This is what greets him: warm sanguine like the back of his eyelids when he closes them shut, cool air-conditioning from which he hides underneath his thick duvet, and the faint buzzing of his phone from somewhere to his right. The scene is still and empty, and though Atsumu can hear faint sounds of activity somewhere in the house, it feels like a ghost town. It’s almost as though he’d woken up in a dystopian video game of some sort, a prologue cutscene before the story progresses. Deceptive in its quietude, hiding terrors in its scabbard. There is sleep in his eyes, so he rubs it off as he reaches for his phone.

Because his curtains are crimson and his windows are facing east, they cast a red light into his room when the beginnings of the sun have risen, tender in their greeting but harsh to the eyes of the barely awake. He blinks a couple of times to let his eyes adjust. 

"Hello?" he says into his phone. He faintly remembers his manners, just then — an inevitable mistake one would make when woken up so abruptly — so he murmurs a late, "Good morning." He’s suddenly aware of the bitter taste in his mouth, making him grimace.

"It's me," his father's voice says next to his ear, voice gruff and bright. Atsumu envies him; how could someone be so enthusiastic this early in the day? "Get up, get dressed. We're eating out for breakfast. There is someone I want you to meet." 

Great. What a fantastic way to start the day. His father had always been trying to set him up with different people, insisting that he _must_ have an active romantic life. ("Devoting yourself to work without having time for yourself will only kill you," his father had warned.) His twin, Osamu, already has a boyfriend, so their father does not hound him as much. Atsumu groans. "Really?" he says, incredulous, face contorted into a grimace. "It's only six." As if to prove his point, he starts to yawn, and he does not bother to silence or hide it in hopes that his father might reconsider.

 _Besides_ , he thinks, and even after all this time, it still makes him feel giddy and warm all over, _I already have a boyfriend._

The thought of Shinsuke brings a smile to his face, but it vanishes immediately after his father speaks again. If his morning were a cracked vase, Shinsuke is the adhesive, but his father is the sledge hammer, unrelenting and unforgiving.

“This isn't a blind date, I swear,” Isamu promises, voice sharp with the urgency of a broke car dealer whose rent is nearly due trying to sell Atsumu a vehicle he doesn’t need. “I just want you to get to know this family, because we're going to be partners soon.”

Yeah, right. That's what he always says, just to get Atsumu to agree, because he knows full well that his son isn’t interested in dating. Nevertheless, Atsumu just rolls his eyes and says a quick, "Okay, fine," before hanging up. If his father knew about his relationship with Shinsuke, would he still keep playing cupid for his son? Atsumu wonders. 

He contemplates this for a few seconds before shaking his head no. This is something he’s mulled over thousands of times in the course of two years, turned it over and over in his palm like a tentative man would a chipped coin, desperate and helpless enough to leave his fate in the hands of a coin toss. But the answer is always the same, no matter how many times he examines the matter at hand: if he and Shinsuke were to make their relationship public, the best case scenario is his father would just fire him and the rest of the Kita family members who work for the Miyas. His father is a bit tight on the “no dating subordinates” rule, after all. And he would never believe — or at least publicly admit that he believes — that Atsumu, his oh so precious son, one of the potential CEOs of the Onigiri Food Corp., initiated the relationship. The blame's going to land on Shinsuke, no matter how hard they try to make him understand, because in the real world, the wealthy towers over all, and the word of an employee is nothing against the word of their boss. And if there's one thing his father loves as much as his family, it's their image. 

Atsumu shrugs. It's not like him to overthink. Besides, he's already turned down all of his father's candidates in the past; surely he can turn this one down, too. 

Phone still in hand, he stands from his bed and walks over to his windows, pulling his curtains open so the red disappears and in comes the white morning sunlight. He sends a good morning text to Shinsuke before heading inside his bathroom, thoughts of a potential significant other candidate already shaken out of his head. 

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  


Ever since Atsumu and Osamu were born, they didn't really know what it felt like to be trapped. They're the sons of a rich man; all the world's their playground. Metaphorical prisons and grave global problems were unfamiliar concepts to them. Their father, aside from being the founder and owner of the renowned Miya Food Corp., is known to be a philanthropist, so it's a given that he's kind hearted by nature. And because of this, he doesn't strictly tell his sons what to do and what not to do, as long as it's for a good cause and they aren't hurting the family image, or anybody else, as an afterthought — family comes first in the Miya household. 

Their father still had rules, of course — no powerful family comes without laws bound in blood — but otherwise, he's a pretty lenient dad. The twins had never felt fear towards their father, but they have no intentions of showing disobedience either, so it all worked out fine for them. It’s not exactly a tightly-knit bond, but closeness isn’t that much of a priority if you have a business to manage.

Atsumu doesn't really have a problem with the "no dating employees" policy. It's not like he has any intentions of attempting to fit in with those who are not on the same level as him. It's not a classist issue, though; he's simply clueless about how their world works. Sometimes, when he comes to visit the main office building, he'd hear them talk about budgeting personal expenses or having their rent due or picking children up from school or making ends meet. And he cannot relate to any of those, so he doesn't even try talking to them, in fear of offending anyone or looking clueless. He tended to run his mouth off, after all. Osamu always gives him an earful whenever he says something inappropriate, so he's learned to be a lot more careful with what comes out of his mouth, learned not to dabble in things he does not understand. 

He has just arrived from a business trip in the Philippines, and his first stop is to drop by the office building immediately after the airport. Pulling his sunglasses from his eyes and shrugging his coat off, he nods at the driver who wishes him a good afternoon. It’s a short drive to the office, and in less than an hour, he’s opening the car door to get out.

“Can you bring my stuff home for me?” he tells the driver. “Thanks.”

On the way in, he walks past a huddle of employees who are headed towards the exit, talking about getting drinks when they get off work. He faintly hears them stop in their tracks to greet him a good afternoon, to which he responds with a lazy wave of his hand. 

He heads immediately for his father's office, taking an elevator to go upwards. He is the harbinger of good fortune today, he thinks, because aside from coaxing an entrepreneur into a merger, he’d also succeeded in sweet-talking this big corporate CEO in the Philippines to make a half billion donation for the Miya charity fund and sponsor a nationwide feeding program.

He thumbs the top floor and close button, pressing his lips together as he stands on the corner of the elevator, leaning on the railing. He whistles, hands in his pockets, one leg crossed in front of the other. The doors are about to close in front of him, but a voice outside shouts, "Wait! Keep them open for me, please." 

Instinctively, he reaches over and puts his hand between the elevator doors, not even thinking about how it is supposed to be inappropriate for a subordinate to order their boss around. He keeps his hand on the elevator doors even as they slide open to their fullest, stepping aside to let the man in. 

The man who enters is considerably tall, but average next to Atsumu, around five foot nine, if Atsumu isn't mistaken. And if the way his formal attire stretches and clings to his shoulders is any indication, he has a muscular build, like an athlete’s or just someone who does manual labor on the daily. He carries with him a faint scent of fresh soil and petrichor, and the bundle of papers he has pressed between the wings of a brown folder. He keeps his hair short — a curtain of gray with black tips, fringe parted in the middle of his forehead, with a small clump of hair in the center, just a little above his thin, dark eyebrows. His eyes are brown and deep, and when he looks at Atsumu there is surprise in them, perhaps even a little bit of intimidation.

“Oh, it’s you,” he breathes, then adds, blinking twice, “sir.” He presses his lips together in apprehension, but doesn’t waver. He keeps his stance, tall and withstanding. Atsumu appreciates that; most employees, when standing close to him, would back away in fear and nervousness, as if he carries some type of contagious disease. This man, however, stood his ground. How curious. He clears his throat. “Thank you, sir. And pardon my intrusion and rudeness, please.”

Atsumu waves a hand dismissively. Looking at the man closer, he realizes that he recognizes the employee from somewhere… He snaps his fingers when he remembers. “You’re Kita, aren’t you? Kita Shinsuke?” he asks. “Your family works in our farms, I believe. One of our main suppliers, yes?”

“That’s correct, sir,” Shinsuke says, reaching over to press the 10th floor elevator button. “Though I have to say, I’m surprised that you even remember me at all.”

“Oh, it’s part of the job description to remember our people,” he says with a shrug. He looks at Shinsuke and his soft, rounded face and controlled expression. Long lashes, piercing gaze. Pretty. Atsumu smirks, giving Shinsuke a deliberate once-over, starting from the very bottom and slowly making his way to Shinsuke’s eyes. His father had made him visit some of their farms a couple of times when he was first starting out in the business field, so he’d learn how the process works, or something. And regularly during harvesting season, now that he’s well-versed in entrepreneurial matters. He’d noticed Shinsuke in the fields, then, back against the glinting afternoon sun, occasionally standing straight to wipe the sweat from his forehead with his arm and peer at the vastness of the land before him, how much of the earth is within his reach. Atsumu remembers thinking how he looked at peace, at home. “And I never forget a pretty face,” he says.

Shinsuke blinks, surprised. He doesn’t look flustered; just taken aback. “You jest, sir,” he decides, finally allowing a faint smile to dance on his lips. “Is flattery also a part of the job description?”

Atsumu’s smirk turns to a grin. He shifts his body so he’s facing Shinsuke, leaning his back against the elevator wall. He folds his hand over his chest. “Depends if it’s working.”

“Maybe,” Shinsuke concedes.

“So what brings you here, Kita-san?” Atsumu asks lightly, eyeing the folder in his hand. “I thought field supervisors were the ones assigned to bring in reports from the farms to the office.”

“Yes,” Shinsuke agrees. “But Kurosu-san called in sick today, so I volunteered to do it in his place.”

“I see,” Atsumu hums. “Well, isn’t this a pleasant work of fate!” He doesn’t really know why he’s saying all this, but the words are tumbling out of his mouth before his mind can even make sense of them. Perhaps it’s got something to do with Shinsuke’s silent charm, making him want to tease him. “If Kurosu-san weren’t sick, we never would have met!”

“I see you a couple of times a month, sir, when you come over to personally check on the fields,” Shinsuke reminds him with a knowing smile.

“Yes, that’s right,” Atsumu says airily. “But I’ve never really seen you up close till now.”

“Well, sir, it’s possible that it’s because that’s not really part of your job description,” Shinsuke says, a joking tone laced in his voice.

Atsumu snorts. He’s honestly surprised by how easy it is to talk to this man. His experience with subordinates usually involved them getting out of the way or being unnecessarily polite, but with Shinsuke, it’s almost like talking to a regular officemate. “Is everyone in your family as quick to tease as you?” he jokes. “Remind me to stay away from your farm, then.”

Shinsuke laughs. “Please don’t let my _wild_ personality keep you from meeting the rest of my clan.”

Atsumu would be lying if he denied that he felt a twinge of disappointment when the elevator doors finally open and Shinsuke bids him goodbye as he steps out of the elevator. He’s still staring at the doors when they close, and even as the lift continues its journey upward. 

He can’t explain the pull he feels toward the man. What is it with his quick wit and kind eyes that made Atsumu want to see more of him? It’s strange, this feeling, and Atsumu doesn’t know what to make of it. This is foreign territory, unfamiliar and forbidden. He knows he’s not supposed to indulge himself and encourage these feelings, but he can’t deny the thrill of getting closer to Shinsuke, of going against his father’s words. The enticing temptation, the desire to do something he’s never done before.

It’s intoxicating, and he doesn’t stop thinking about it even as he goes home that night, back in the comfort of his house, where everything is a reminder of the life his father provided him without asking for anything in return other than to steer clear from getting into an employee’s pants.

It’s the first time Atsumu feels like wanting to rebel, to disobey his father’s explicit orders not to fraternize with an employee. It’s the first time he feels trapped, and he longs, suddenly, for a breath of fresh air, longs for a life where public image isn’t an issue and he can date whoever he wants without consequences.

It’s the first time he considers the thought, entertaining it with genuine interest the way a child would earnestly toy with their playthings. It’s the first, and he’s certain, as he feels it fester in his chest, feels the pull in his gut, that it won’t be the last.

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


Atsumu rarely wears suits at breakfast, but this time he feels the need to, fearing he’d be the odd, underdressed one out. And his hunch is right, because when he walks down their curved staircase, he sees his father sitting on one of their couches in the living room, donning a black suit similar to his. It must be really serious if his father is dressed to impress. Suddenly he’s not so confident that he’d be able to talk his way out of this. His mood sours.

“Ready to go?” his father asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer and just stands to leave without Atsumu having to say a word. They enter the car, Atsumu nodding at the driver who opens the doors for them. “Now,” his father starts, “I want you to genuinely try and get along with this family as much as you can, alright? Especially with Ryuga’s son; I heard he’s a tough nut to crack, Kiyoomi, his name is.”

Atsumu sighs, exasperation evident in his voice. “Father, I already said I’m not interested—”

“Oh, it’s not like that, son,” his father promises. “I know you’re not interested in dating. It’s just that Ryuga is a powerful man, alright? Offending him is, well, ill-advised, to say the least. I'm confident in my own power, but it's best not to make an enemy of him.” He mutters something else under his breath, but Atsumu fails to catch it, so he just lets the matter drop. 

The car stops in front of a hotel entrance: a hundred stories high, glass lining the sides. On the upper floors, the walls are reflective and bright, almost gold under the morning sun. The driver gets out and rounds the car to open the doors for them. As they get out, Atsumu’s father informs Atsumu that they’re in one of the Sakusas’ hotels, as Ryuga had requested that they dine at their rooftop restaurant. 

Atsumu follows his father inside the glass doors where the security guards standing by greet them as they pass, through the fancy hallways that would have been lit by the huge chandeliers on the ceiling above them, if not for the natural light coming in through the large windows, and to the elegant, gold-accented elevators of which the floors are carpeted, the sides mirrored, from which they emerge into a wide rooftop with various facilities such as restaurants, cafés, and swimming pools. There are even some telescopes which people can use to get a closer view of the city.

Miya Isamu seems to know where he’s going because he doesn’t hesitate and heads immediately for the table around which two familiar men are sitting. They must be Ryuga and his son, Atsumu supposes, and he forces a genuine-passing smile on his face as they approach the two Sakusas. 

_Seriously,_ Atsumu thinks, _could they be anymore obvious?_ This is clearly a set-up, because if it isn’t, then why the hell did Ryuga only bring one eligible child out of the three that he has? Same thing with his father. Osamu would drop anything he’s doing if father summons him. (Well, maybe there are things he wouldn’t let go of, but that’s beside the point.)

Ryuga stands to clap Isamu on the back. He’s on the tall side, a couple of inches taller than Atsumu’s father. His hair is dark, graying at the roots, and he wears a pair of prescription glasses. But he is good-looking all the same. “I’m glad you could come,” he says. “I believe getting our families to know each other properly before the merger is important. Establish rapport. Gain trust.”

Sure. That’s all that this is. Of course there’s no way they could have ulterior motives. Atsumu almost snorts, but he manages to keep his amusement in. He finds it funny how they’re obviously trying to keep it subtle, but still fall short miserably, despite their best efforts. Isamu and Ryuga might be good leaders, but they’re not very good at acting. Or hiding things. Which is ironic because as public figures, you’d think secrecy is within their area of expertise, having to keep certain things away from the shine of the limelight.

“Kiyoomi, if I’m not mistaken?” Atsumu’s father says, eyes on the pale, curly-haired man sitting beside Ryuga.

Sakusa Kiyoomi doesn’t seem like the loud, commanding type, but he appears to have an air of control around him. Something that newspapers and the media cannot seem to fully capture — those images definitely do not prepare you for the real thing, the magnitude of his presence and how it seems to press on you like until you crumble under his stare. His curls are parted to his left — right, from Atsumu’s perspective — which is directly opposite Atsumu’s, whose hair is parted to his right. He has two moles on the right side of his forehead, one on top of the other, just above the arch of his dark eyebrows. By the way he sits, he seems to be around six feet tall. He’s handsome — the kind of quiet beauty that doesn’t scream to be noticed, but captures you altogether. Makes you want to stare at his face for hours on end without getting sick of it. His features are so… perfect. There’s no other way of putting it, really. His individual features aren't exactly magnificent on their own. His eyes hardly differ from a regular man's, his nose just like any other's. But when woven together, they seem just right. Perfect. It’s as if whoever had sculpted his face took extra time and carefully pieced everything together so nothing would seem out of place.

“Yes, sir,” Kiyoomi speaks. His voice is deep and rich, like his eyes and the black of his hair. “You are not mistaken.”

“Oh, please,” Isamu says. “Don’t be so formal with me.” He puts a hand on Atsumu’s shoulder. “This is my son, Atsumu, though I’m certain you’ve already heard of him.”

“Yes, Isamu-san, I have,” Kiyoomi says tightly. He meets Atsumu’s eyes and gives a stiff nod. Doesn’t even bother with a fake smile. Atsumu finds this amusing and maybe also a little insulting. “Pleasure to meet you, Atsumu-san.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Kiyoomi-kun,” Atsumu says, grinning a little. His fingers find the glass of water before him, and he takes a sip just to have something to do. It’s only then that he realizes how dry his throat had been when the water cools it down.

“Come now,” Ryuga says loudly. “Don’t act so shy around each other. You’re not teenagers! Shake each other’s hands!”

“You’re the ones acting like teenagers,” Atsumu wants to say as he reaches over the table to shake Kiyoomi’s hand, which is cold but soft and smooth to the touch. “Setting up stupid dates for your own damn children. Just leave me alone! Christ.”

But he isn’t at liberty to say any of those, so instead he leaves them to their own devices to talk, and looks around, taking in the view his eyes have been blessed with. The rooftop overlooks the city, which is bustling and loud; the city's people, it seems, are waking up in their homes to go about their day, and perhaps some have never even slept at all since the sun dipped low to make room for the moon. Tall buildings scrape the sky, embraced by the clouds as one of their own. It’s comforting to hear the sounds of only a number of cars heading from one place to another so early in the morning; of people taking morning swims with their family or friends or significant others in the rooftop pool; of waiters and cooks busy moving around to serve their customers, especially eager now that their boss is present; of metal spoons and forks and knives being pitted against glass plates.

Atsumu doesn’t really try to keep up with the conversation, and it’s only when the food arrives that his attention comes back to the table. He eats slowly, savoring the food in his mouth. Had he been eating a regular breakfast at home, he’d have been racing with Osamu by now, competing to see who’d eat the most and finish the fastest. But this is not a regular dinner, unfortunately, so he has to mind his manners and practice proper table etiquette.

He glances at Kiyoomi, looking at the way he eats with careful chews and proper slices. He doesn’t make a sound as he eats, and his utensils barely scrape his plate. He keeps to himself and only half listens as his father desperately grasps at straws to try to make him engage in the conversation.

Perhaps if they had met under different circumstances he and Atsumu would have been friends. But since they’re both being unwillingly set up together by their goddamned meddling fathers, there’s a mutual spark between them that’s on the negative end of attraction. 

Atsumu almost laughs loudly when he looks at Isamu and Ryuga exchanging looks of hopelessness. _That’s what you get_ , he thinks, _for bringing us here against our will._

“Kiyoomi,” Isamu calls, “I hear you like sports. My son does, too.”

“Oh, do you, now, Atsumu-san?” Kiyoomi drawls, eyes on Atsumu as he picks at his food. His voice isn’t unkind, but Atsumu is willing to bet that if politeness weren’t a requirement, his tone would have been scathing.

“Yep, that’s me,” Atsumu says, making sure to project an equal amount of boredom in his voice to assert dominance. Two can play this game. “A volleyball-loving idiot.”

Kiyoomi raises an eyebrow slightly, and Atsumu would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking at him. There's a challenging expression on his face, but it disappears as quickly as it had arrived, replaced by exasperation. “Father,” he says to Ryuga, “Forgive my impertinence and for saying this in front of our guests, but I truly am not interested in dating. And I would appreciate it if you keep away from meddling with my personal matters, please.”

Atsumu’s eyes widens, his lips coming together at the center to form a small ‘o’. He’s not going to lie: that was impressive. Personally, he wouldn’t have had the guts to speak against his father in front of other equally respectable people. 

Ryuga sighs. “I know, son, but—”

“Well,” Isamu interrupts, clearing his throat. “I guess there’s no hiding it anymore, eh, Ryuga?” He clasps his hands together, and Atsumu thinks, _And so it begins._ Atsumu’s father and Ryuga share a silent conversation for a while, perhaps debating if they should tell their sons about whatever it is that they’d been keeping a secret.

Ryuga sighs again. “Alright, then,” he says. “Might as well tell you now, since you’d know anyway, sooner or later.”

“What is it?” Kiyoomi asks. His voice is not, in any way, loud and strong, but Atsumu can tell he’s demanding, can sense his urgency. Atsumu doesn't know why, but Kiyoomi seems to be alarmed. Like he knows what their fathers are about to say next. And he doesn't like it. At all. 

Isamu takes a deep breath, and Atsumu finds that heʼs holding his. “It was not really a serious suggestion on my part, but after I placed it on the table, it seemed fitting, if I do say so myself, given the circumstances,” Isamu says. “Ryuga and I have discussed that, for the betterment of both our corporations, it would be in our best interests if we… merged.”

“And,” Ryuga interject, “it may also have a part to play on my upcoming candidacy.”

 _Oh God._ Isamu had mentioned something about merging before, but Atsumu never thought twice about it. Until now. Now that he's seen the look of alarm on Kiyoomi's face, however subtle he tries to play it off. The pieces start to fit together in his mind with an awful click. “Merged,” Atsumu repeats slowly, dread creeping up his spine like taunting fingers. “Father, merge how, exactly?” 

Kiyoomi's eyes dart at Atsumu when he speaks and return to their fathers when he finishes, staring at them with rapt attention, as if trying to coax the truth out of them with just his own eyes. 

“Marriage,” Ryuga says, finally, an attempt at an encouraging smile plastered on his face, though it does not have the desired effect. “No stronger bond than the olʼ ball and chain, eh?” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


This is what it means to swim in the tide, 

to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. 

This is what it means to be alive.

_—Madeline Miller, Circe_

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The sea is slow today, the tide tickling their feet as they watch it push forward and pull back, again, again, again — a never-ending cycle caused by the lunar gravitational pull. The sand is wet and sticky beneath their skin as they dig in to bury their feet underneath, seawater trickling inside the hole they dug. 

The beach looks like an entirely different world with only the two of them as its sole inhabitants. Here, where the coastline resembles the curves of Shinsuke’s face, where the tide ebbs back to the sea the same way Atsumu curls into Shinsuke’s side, it’s easy to forget the fact that their relationship is sworn to secrecy.

“Thanks for taking time off work to come here with me,” Atsumu says, head on Shinsukeʼs shoulder. “I know how much you value your job.” 

“Hey,” Shinsuke says, tapping the tip of Atsumu's nose lightly with his index finger, leaving grains of sand on his skin. “Don't sweat it. Whatʼs two days off work? Besides, it’s a weekend. Iʼm sure my family wonʼt crucify me for having a bit of fun.” 

“They won't.” Atsumu grins. “They love you too much to be able to hold anything against you. Their precious hardworking wittle Shinsuke,” he cooes, pouting a little. He tugs at Shinsuke’s fingers, toying with them using his own. He wishes that they can stay like this forever, so they wouldn’t have to hide their love with stolen glances and secret smiles.

Shinsuke smiles and presses his lips against Atsumuʼs. “Cute,” he says, scrunching his nose a little. The wind picks up a few strands of his hair, carrying them over to the other side of his head. The dull, cloudy afternoon sun is behind Shinsukeʼs face, like a halo, tracing the outline of his head with light, and itʼs as if the world around them brightens up a little. 

Atsumu had always thought of Shinsuke as an angel, but this sight felt especially holy. 

He feels his cheeks become warm. “Don't do that,” he says, not bothering to fight off his smile. “My heart might burst.”

“Well, if it ends up killing you, Iʼll just say it was a crime of passion,” Shinsuke says. He holds Atsumu's face with one hand, four of his fingers on Atsumu's left cheek and a thumb on the other. “Grants me a lesser sentence.” 

“You’re scary, Shinsuke-kun,” Atsumu remarks with a laugh. He stands to stretch. “I like it here,” he says, eyes on the horizon with a sort of sadness he canʼt explain. “I feel free. Alive. No father to forbid me from being with you. It’s just us here. And the sea, and the sand, and all else the earth has to offer us.” 

Perhaps this sadness manifested itself, he supposes, because the thought of this paradise having to crumble to dust in their memories when the weekend turns to Monday still lingers in the back of his mind even as he tries to forget it. So close to reach he can almost grab it if he leans forward. 

He clears his throat and turns to Shinsuke, who's already getting up. “Wanna swim and make out in the sea?” 

Shinsuke laughs, boisterous and unrestrained like the tides. Thereʼs a devilish glint in his eyes, and Atsumu barely has time to yelp when Shinsuke drags him to the water. 

“Someoneʼs a little too excited!” Atsumu teases over the waves, and when Shinsuke pulls him underwater, heʼs at home in Shinsukeʼs arms. 

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


Itʼs been a week since Isamu and Ryuga announced that they had arranged Atsumu and Kiyoomiʼs marriage. Agreed upon it, as if their sonsʼ lives are nothing more than playthings they can toy with however they please. Osamu had been on his twinʼs side, enraged that Atsumu had been forced into such a situation. “Setting him up on dates is one thing, father,” he says. “Arranging his marriage against his will is another! This is _marriage_ , weʼre talking about. It involves living together and sleeping together and—” 

“Yes, son, I know what marriage entails,” Isamu says, raising a hand to prevent Osamu from saying more. “I mean, he did always say that he was far from appreciative about my attempts to get him a date. Well, this time I got him a spouse!” 

Osamu snorts. “Yeah, so it's even worse now.” 

“Look, son.” Isamu is addressing Atsumu now, voice careful and low, as if Atsumu is a small bird and one loud slip-up would send him flying away. “This partnership is mostly for the benefit of Ryuga, who is running for the House of Councillors. And you know how much the people of Japan love our franchises, especially Onigiri Miya. Ryuga would stand to gain a lot from an influence of this magnitude. He is a powerful man, yes, but his might is only appealing to certain classes of people, whereas our food favors nobody and all. Aside from that, everyone knows where my principles lie, so they trust me, and they will place the same trust on Ryuga too, once they know of our relations.” None of the twins say anything to that, so he takes it as his cue to continue,“Osamu is dating Rintarou, meanwhile you're single. Kiyoomiʼs older siblings are married, so the two of you are the perfect tributes. Besides, the two of you could just get a divorce a little while after the election is over. If you really don't want to be together, in the end.” 

Osamu blinks. “Well, if you put it that way, that doesn't actually sound too bad.” 

“Yes, it does!” Atsumu shouts. “It does! It is bad! And I hate it!” 

“Please, son,” Isamu says. “You know I never asked you to do things you don't want to do.” 

_Yes, exactly!_ Atsumu wants to say. _You never forced me to do anything before, so why start now? And why this, of all things?_

“Just this once?” Isamu pleads, and Atsumu’s vision turns red. How can his father ask him of this as if it’s nothing but a simple favor, like making him a cup of tea or booking him a flight to a different country?

He forces himself to release a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. “I'll think about it,” he says in a small, stiff voice, even though he knows he doesn't really have much of a choice. But it makes him feel better, making his father wait for a go signal only he can give. A false sense of security; as if he still had control over his decisions in life. He heads to his room, the heavy silence surrounding him a stark contrast to his loud footfalls echoing in the hallway. 

Why is this whole prospect of marriage bothering him, anyway? It’s not as if it’s a life-long thing. Isamu said it himself; they could just get a divorce once all this is over. Go about their separate lives after a few months of being wed. Osamu was right: when put that way, it doesn’t sound all too bad. So why is he so against it?

Here’s an obvious answer: he has a boyfriend, and he sure as hell does not want to break up with him. Ever. Other than that, he can’t disclose his and Shinsuke’s relationship to anyone in order to prove that he, too, is not an appropriate tribute, because not only does it go against his father’s rules, it would also leave the Kita family unemployed. He can’t do that to them. If it were up to him, he’d definitely come out with the truth, or run away with Shinsuke, far from hs father’s eyes, but where would that leave Shinsuke’s family? 

So he can’t refuse, because his father would ask why. And he can’t lie to his father, because that never ends well. If Isamu figures out that something’s not adding up, he always gets to the bottom of it. He doesn’t want to agree, either, because that would mean breaking up with Shinsuke.

Atsumu sighs, shoulders sagging in defeat. He’s used to people being taken from him, anyway, so why should this be any different? He falls to his back on the bed, face on his hands. It hurts his brain, thinking too much about this, when he knows it only ends in one way: the way his father wants. He rolls to his side, fingers grabbing his phone and typing in a number he’s seen so many times that he memorized it as if it is his own.

“Shinsuke,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. Frail and weak and defeated. He inhales, and he can hear Shinsuke’s questions of concern in his ear. He tries to remember the feel of wet sand underneath the soles of his feet, tries to remember the way the water wraps its body around his, the same way he wraps his arms around Shinsuke’s body. He’s lost in his thoughts now, desperately grasping at moments long gone. He sees it so vividly in the eye of his mind, that weekend of freedom at the beach, that for a second he thought he could taste salt on his tongue.

And he finds that there is indeed salty liquid in his mouth. It isn’t seawater, though. Just his tears.

“Atsumu?” Shinsuke says. His voice is as gentle as ever. On his end of the line, Atsumu can hear the roar of carts being pulled, filled with freshly picked vegetables, of people talking, lively and energetic. He can almost feel the sun beating against his back, should he think hard enough. “What’s wrong?”

“We have to break up,” he says.

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍  
  


  
  
  
  
  


Shinsuke is sleeping beside him, chest bared to greet the early morning sun. A curtain of his hair falls over his eyes as he dreams. Atsumu reaches for his face, but his body feels alienated and heavy, somehow, as if he is being pinned down with invisible weight. He brushes Shinsuke's hair out of his face, and the scene fades to a beach and a gray, cloudy sky. 

The average person is typically unaware of the fact that they are dreaming, and the part of their mind that is processing their dream would simply accept it as if it weren’t anything out of the ordinary. They’d dream of being heroes and conjuring storms, and to them it is nowhere near fiction.

But Atsumu usually knows when he is dreaming. There’s always this inkling in the back of his mind that alerts him when things are not what they seem.

The sand is dry and sharp under his feet. The sea is at low-tide, worlds away from where Atsumu is walking. There is a heaviness surrounding him that he can’t quite place. It’s as if he’s deep underneath the water, and the pressure is making every fibre of his body scream in near total combustion. He is holding someone's hand in his and without needing to see their face, he knows it's Shinsuke, but when he looks up, there is no one there. 

Atsumu pulls his coat around him tightly, the cold seabreeze harsher now that he is alone. 

The world is dark around him, and the tides are pulling back, farther and farther from the shore, and his shoes don't embed themselves deep enough in the sand for the footprints to stay — if this isn't the psychological manifestation of the heartbreak he’s feeling, then Atsumu doesn't know what it is. And is his wound truly so deep that it haunts him even in his sleep?

The water seems to recoil from him, ebbing away every time he takes a step forward. There’s something calming about it, he supposes despite himself, about the hollow tube of lonesomeness ensconcing him like a tomb. 

He closes his eyes, thinking of what it would be like to be in a casket tossed to the sea. Would the rocking of the waves lull him to a peaceful, dreamless sleep? Or would he succumb to his unrest and perish out of sheer loneliness?

When he opens his eyes, the scene changes again: draped on Atsumu's arm is his suit coat, and he is wearing a white, long-sleeved polo, watch wrapped around his wrist. The sun is in his eyes, so he covers the light with his hand. He sees Shinsuke, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, leaning on a table and bringing a bottle of water to his mouth. And he forgets that this is a dream, all rational thought seeping out of him once he sees the beauty that is Shinsuke.

Atsumu feels the corner of his lip tug upwards into a small smile. Unbuttoning his polo shirt once to give himself more room to breathe, he walks over to where Shinsuke is standing. “Fancy seeing you here,” he says. 

Shinsuke laughs softly. “Would you like a straw hat, my lord?” he says, reaching for a hat on the table and offering it to Atsumu. “Itʼs pretty hot out here.” 

Atsumu smirks, giving Shinsuke a once-over. “I know,” he says. 

The dream shifts again, and this time itʼs quiet, no roaring of the waves, no sounds of farmers toiling about the fields, not a single sound, except Shinsukeʼs breathing beside him. They’re on his bed, naked limbs and sheets tangled under the dim light of the moon. The bedside windows are wide open, allowing the chilly evening breeze to come in and cool their flushed skin. Outside, thousands of stars look over the farmland fields that stretch for miles, as far as Atsumu’s eyes can see. Atsumu thinks that this is what he wants to wake up to for as long as he’s alive: Shinsuke in his arms and little else between them.

Atsumu leans down to plant a kiss on Shinsuke’s lips. They’re soft, and then they’re gone.

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


Atsumu’s father had invited the Sakusas over for dinner, saying it’s his turn to be the host. Over the food, they discussed their excitement about their sons’ agreement to the arrangement — reluctant, but agreement, nonetheless. “I guess you two have to spend more time together now, huh?” Isamu says, half-teasing. “Considering you’ll be wed in a few months.”

“And when would this wedding take place, exactly?” Kiyoomi’s features are tight and knit together, and he’s barely looked at Atsumu in the past few hours. If it weren’t considered rude, he probably would have added a curse word to that question. 

“The election is in October, so probably around June,” Ryuga says. “I think four months are enough for our countrymen to get used to your marital status.”

“So it’s three months from now, then,” Atsumu clarifies, quickly counting the months in his head. Considering that these two men are immensely wealthy, Atsumu has no doubts that they would be able to pull off a grand wedding in such a small period of time. 

“Think of it as a getting-to-know-the-other stage, those three months,” Isamu says. The grin on his face seems to be permanently plastered there. Smug and far too pleased for Atsumu’s liking that it stokes the flames of anger inside him. And for a while he lets it. In those moments, Atsumu wonders, out of spite, what he could do to wipe that damned grin off. Walk out? Call off the wedding without an explanation?

Kiyoomi finally looks at him for the first time tonight, as if he’d caught wind of what he’s thinking. He doesn’t say anything, though, so Atsumu just stares back, challenge in his eyes. Then Kiyoomi sighs, loud enough for Atsumu to know that it’s directed toward him.

Truth be told, Atsumu wouldn’t mind Kiyoomi’s hostility. He’d welcome it, actually, maybe even fire back with some of his own. He still hopes to get back together with Shinsuke after this, and if there is not a single spark of attraction between him and his fiancé, it’s less likely that he would fall out of love with Shinsuke. It would be easier to deal with his heartbreak too, he thinks, if he doesn’t have to pretend to be smitten with someone else.

“I think the getting-to-know-the-other stage comes before the engagement,” Atsumu jokes, but it falls flat on his tongue, because it’s the ugly truth, and no amount of false humor can make it the least bit hilarious. Not to him, that is. 

Isamu and Ryuga both laugh, though, having missed the tinge of bitterness in Atsumu’s tone. “Well, I’ve always told you you were special, son, so the norm doesn't really apply to you,” Isamu jokes. “Now excuse us for a while, we have things to discuss in private. How about you two head over to the garden and talk? It’s a bit difficult to marry someone whose life you hardly know, don’t you think?”

 _It’s a lot difficult to marry someone who isn’t Shinsuke, actually_ , Atsumu thinks, biting his tongue to keep himself from saying it out loud. “Alright,” he says instead. Standing up, he glances at Kiyoomi to address him, “Follow me,” he says, “my betrothed.”

Ryuga laughs. “Your son is a funny man, Isamu.” He brings a glass of champagne to his lips, taking a sip.

“Where do you think he gets it?”

Atsumu walks ahead, and all false pleasantries fade away from his demeanor as he turns his back to them, heading for the garden. The moon is bright when he steps out of the doors, and for a moment he thinks he’s back in his dream, in bed with a sleeping Shinsuke as he stares at the star-laden sky, holding the world in his arms. But Kiyoomi calls his name and he sees that there are no stars — it’s just the moon.

“Atsumu,” Kiyoomi tests. He makes a face as if he tasted something unpleasant. He clears his throat and tries again, “Miya.”

“You don’t have to look so disgusted, you know,” Atsumu tells him. “You’re not the only one who hates this.”

Kiyoomi eyes him carefully. He does that a lot, Atsumu notes, handling things with utmost care. When he eats, he does it slowly to savor the taste. When he walks, each stride is made to look purposeful and confident. When he speaks, it’s not before he thinks it through. “So why did you agree, then?” Kiyoomi asks.

Atsumu takes a long, deep breath, pressing his lips together, trying to decide how to word it properly. “Let’s just say,” he starts, “that there’s someone I hold dearly in my heart whose life I don’t want to ruin with my selfishness.” 

When Atsumu called Shinsuke the other day, they both agreed that they shouldn’t risk Shinsuke’s family’s stability in life for their relationship. “If it were only me,” Shinsuke had said, “I would never let you go.” Atsumu had heard him swallow thickly over the phone, then, with loud chatter on Shinsuke’s end and silence on his. “But I can’t do that to my family.”

“I know,” Atsumu had said, voice cracking at the words. He had wondered why he didn’t start crying right then and there. “I understand, really. I wouldn’t be able to, either.”

Kiyoomi is silent, and for a while Atsumu feared that he would ask more about it. But he doesn’t. He accepts the answer and lets it go.

“And you?” Atsumu asks in turn, but Kiyoomi only shrugs.

“Don’t expect me to act all lovey-dovey with you,” Kiyoomi tells him instead. “Maybe it’s because I was forced in this situation, but I don’t like you in the slightest. So I won’t pretend to be in love with you or even treat you as a friend. I’ll tolerate you, and that’s all.”

Atsumu scoffs, appalled. “Why are you acting as if I wanted this? I'm not sure if you've gotten the memo, _Kiyoomi_ , but I'm not exactly fond of you either,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Don’t act like I’m not forced into this too, because it pisses me off.”

“Great,” Kiyoomi says, not returning Atsumu’s annoyance. His face is calm and unaffected, which for some reason infuriates Atsumu even more, though he doesn’t do anything about it. “Glad that’s been established. I’m only in this for the deal I made with my dad. That’s it.”

Deal? Atsumu almost asks, but he remembers that they’re not supposed to be friends, therefore he does not. He shrugs. “Whatever,” he says, feigning apathy. “I don’t care about why you agreed to this, anyway.”

Kiyoomi smirks. “Yeah? Is that why you asked?”

“I was being polite!” Atsumu says. Then, begrudgingly: “Although, I have to admit, now that you mentioned a deal, I am the slightest bit curious.”

Kiyoomi snorts. “I'm sure,” he says, walking away, back to the house.

A childish move, Atsumu knows, but he still sticks his tongue out at Kiyoomi’s retreating figure. “I take back what I said,” he says to himself. “Even if we met under different circumstances, we still wouldn’t be friends.” Then, louder, he calls to Kiyoomi, “Where are you going? We’re not supposed to head back yet! We’re supposed to get to know each other, remember?”

Kiyoomi doesn’t respond, proceeding to trudge forward, towards the house. Though, Atsumu guesses, if they had been friends, he would have given Atsumu the middle finger, just to be petty. He seems like the type who'd do just that.

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  


Over the course of three months, their fathers had insisted that, aside from the occasional family dinners, they get together everyday. Go on dates, they had said. Prepare for a life together, they had said. Both Atsumu and Kiyoomi refused, though. It’s bad enough that they had to be married in a few months’ time, but having to act like they’re in a relationship in public? Good lord. At least marriage meant that they’d mostly keep indoors, hidden within the four walls of agony.

Isamu and Ryuga managed to convince them a couple of times, though, insisting that it’s important to keep up appearances, or else no one would think that the marriage is more than just politics. They had to sell the act, or they'd be caught on their bullshit. Atsumu consoles himself with the gratifying thought that he can at least stay as far away as he can from the wedding preparations. He had no fucking clue about the specifics of the event, and he didn’t care enough to ask.

The first time they went out had been a disaster. Isamu had pulled Atsumu aside and told him that it's Kiyoomi's birthday, so Atsumu planned to be nice to him. But Kiyoomi makes it too fucking hard to keep things civil between them, and they couldn’t stop arguing over the littlest of things, so Atsumu decides that he can't care less whether it's Kiyoomi's birthday or not. 

“You’re insufferable. Must you make such a big deal out of trivialities?” Kiyoomi says, annoyed. His eyebrows are furrowed, and Atsumu can practically see smoke emitting from his ears in his annoyance. Today, he’s all covered up: black, filtered face mask, white long-sleeved shirt underneath a red sweater, and a pair of pants. He has the collar out, and the ends of his white sleeves are folded a few inches up, overlapping with his sweater. 

“Oh, so I’m the petty one now,” Atsumu says, voice heated. He’s not really angry though; he’s only doing this to egg Kiyoomi on, which seems to be working. Atsumu had found recently that his favorite source of entertainment is this little game he calls “How Angry Can Kiyoomi Get?” He scoffs. He’s all layered up, too: white long sleeves under a black shirt, chains on his pants and around his neck, and a bucket hat. “You’re the one sprayed alcohol on my face, dipshit!”

“You provoked me!” Kiyoomi fires back.

Atsumu tries to push down the smirk that’s threatening to tug his lips up. He knows that the fun would end by then, because Kiyoomi would catch on to what he’s trying to do. “Because you’re maddening!” he says to further get on Kiyoomi’s nerves. “How do you live with yourself, always trying to pick apart everything you lay your eyes on?” 

Kiyoomi groans loudly, fed up with Atsumu’s irritating antics. If he weren’t a germaphobe, he would have rubbed his hands on his face in exasperation. 

Atsumu can’t hold in his amusement anymore. He laughs, slapping a hand on his knee as he doubles over. “You're so funny when you get all riled up,” he says. “It's like watching a confused toddler trying to figure out if they're being mocked or not.”

“I hate you,” Kiyoomi says, venom in his voice, and there's no doubt that he means it. 

The second time is a lot more silent; they mostly kept to themselves, having lost all energy to even make small talk. Atsumu isn’t quite sure what Kiyoomi’s problem is, but for him, it's his and Shinsuke's second year anniversary, or it would have been if they hadn't broken up, and here Atsumu is, on a date with another man. 

Atsumu didn't really want to go, much less speak, but his father had forced him, practically shooing him out of the house. “Campaigning season will start soon,” Isamu had said. “Itʼs always best to be ahead of the game.” 

Itʼs Kiyoomi's turn to pick their date venue (a deal they had agreed upon, after Kiyoomi's relentless nitpicking about Atsumu's choice of dating spots, which had been the subject of their dispute in the first place, which, in turn had escalated to Atsumu using it as an opportunity to further irritate Kiyoomi), and this time he picks a movie theater. 

This is what Atsumu would have said, had he been in the mood to jest: “Is this your way of seducing me, forcing me to watch a horror movie with you in an attempt to scare me into holding hands with you? I didn't peg you for the cliché type, Omi-kun.”

But he really isn't one for humor as of the present, so he doesn't say it. Only thinks it for a brief moment, before letting it settle beneath the depths of the listless gloom of his mind. 

And everything reminds him of Shinsuke. They had gone on multiple dates in this movie theater, both being particularly enthusiastic in regards to exploring their cinematic tastes. They'd tried every popcorn flavor the snack bar had to offer (which, really, isn't saying much since it only had around twenty flavors, more or less, but still). He's pretty familiar with the girl who likes to work overtime at the cash register, too, as he likes to strike conversations with anyone he's standing close to for at least a minute.

So it's not a surprise that her face falls when she sees Atsumu with a different guy. “Oh,” she says, not really knowing what to say, and neither does Atsumu. 

He bites his lip, sighing. It's a shame really, to him and to everyone else who have had the privilege to know him and Shinsuke as romantic partners, that they _almost_ lasted two years but never truly did. They had been something glorious. He can only hope that whatever they had won’t be deterred by this unfortunate arrangement.

He nods at her and says nothing. She nods back, the question in her eyes falling silent on her lips. 

“Two tickets, please,” Kiyoomi says, unaware of the awkward tension that had suddenly spiked between Atsumu and the girl behind the counter, “for that documentary film.” 

At this, Atsumu manages to crack a weak smile, and the air starts to clear — just a little bit. It's obvious to him that Kiyoomi hadn't bothered to know the film's title, just chose the one that seemed most likely to bore Atsumu to death. “Eager to kill me, are you?” he says. 

Kiyoomi glances at him, head tilted. “So he speaks.” 

Atsumu rolls his eyes. 

“Itʼs just…” Kiyoomi begins, and there's sort of a sophisticated touch in the way he says things, like it's plain and simple fact and only he can see that. He sounds kind of smug, too, but all the carefulness that barricades his words seem to mask that. “I've always taken you for a fool. I thought it would be nice to show you something mind-stimulating for once.” 

“You sick bastard,” Atsumu says in reply, but there's no malice on his tongue, only a hint of amusement shining through the somber clouds of his low-spiritedness. “I hate you, you know that?” 

“Why?” Kiyoomi asks, feigning perplexity. “Consider it a gift, from one wise man to a half-wit idiot.” 

“I want to punch you,” Atsumu says. He's vaguely aware of the girl at the counter following their exchange with her eyes, no doubt trying to gauge the nature of their relationship. It's evident to him that her initial thought was that they were lovers, but seeing as how they regarded each other with such hostility, he can tell that she's second guessing her assumption. 

“I bet you do,” Kiyoomi says off-handedly, turning away from Atsumu to face the girl. “How much do I owe you?” 

She blinks, realizing that she is being addressed, and quickly tells Kiyoomi the sum of which he owes her, handing him the tickets. “Please enjoy the movie,” she says politely, out of duty. Then she says to Atsumu, hesitatingly, unsure of how to act, “Itʼs been a while.” She pauses to give him an awkward smile that almost seemed like a grimace. “Please try not to burn the theater down,” she adds, glancing at Kiyoomi. 

Atsumu laughs, reaching over to pat her head. “I'll try.” 

“You know her?” Kiyoomi asks, once they're out of her earshot.

“Yeah, I came here often,” Atsumu says, hoping he gave the impression that he'd been alone instead of being out with his boyfriend. _Ex-_ boyfriend, he corrects himself. 

“What did she mean, don't burn the theater down?” Kiyoomi questions. His tone is curious but with an edge of caution. “Are you an arsonist?” 

Atsumu snorts, taken aback at the sudden accusation. “Arson is the first that comes to mind?” he says, laughing. “She just meant that, with all our arguing, we might tear the world apart.” 

Kiyoomi doesn't say much else after that. 

Their third and most recent, the setting of which had been left to Atsumu’s choosing this time, is more on the extreme side: laser tag. Atsumu knows Kiyoomi detests leg work, especially if it can be particularly avoided, so he brings Kiyoomi for a round or two of laser tag with other participants that they are unfamiliar with on a relative scale. It backfires on him, though, because what he didn’t take into account is Kiyoomi’s competitive tendencies, and he totally kicked Atsumu’s ass, as much as the latter hated to admit it.

“You’re a fucking monster,” Atsumu says blankly as he watches Kiyoomi down his bottle of water in one gulp after three rounds of laser tag. They’re sitting on a bench, watching the large screen as other people enter the maze-like room, eager for their turn at laser tag. The room they’re sitting in is illuminated by bright artificial lights that are a stark contrast to the darkness of the maze behind the wall before them.

“You’re a fucking sore loser,” Kiyoomi fires back, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. 

Atsumu’s eyebrows shoot up and laughter sputters out of his mouth in broken gasps. He seems to be doing that a lot lately, finding Kiyoomi amusing. “Who knew, huh?” he says thoughtfully, amusement plain on his face like red paint on white canvas. “I certainly didn’t.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t know me,” Kiyoomi says, re-positioning himself so he’s sitting with his back straight. The fluorescent light hits his face just right, defining his jawline. He’s a lot calmer now, the carefulness that had disappeared as he went wild in his pursuit of victory now back in his demeanor like it never left, ingrained so deeply in the way he carries himself that it seemed to be a part of him, growing up, and not something he only picked up along the way. 

The playfulness disappears from Atsumu’s eyes as well. Looking at Kiyoomi now, all caged and poised and cautious, he’s reminded of how all this is… real. Having only been in each other’s company for about less than a quarter of the three months that had passed since the merger announcement, all of it hadn’t seemed real. It all felt more like a bad, far away dream that’ll be long gone before he knew it. A flimsy accord that’s so easily buried under a thin blanket of snow that it’s not even worth looking twice at. Of course, the breakup with Shinsuke was all too real and still much too painful to bear, comparable, perhaps, to a painstaking circadian jog into a thicket of dead, thorny trees, with the way that it haunts him as he breathes, but in little pockets of borrowed time like this where reality is but a distant memory, it sometimes slips his mind that his hand is already promised to someone who doesn’t make his heart beat and ache and yearn the way Shinsuke does.

And now that the day of the accursed wedding is nearing, it starts to feel a lot more suffocating.

“Yeah,” Atsumu says, his voice small. “I don’t know you at all.”

Kiyoomi tilts his head to side-eye him. “And yet,” he says, “you’re to take my name.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


“I wish I could live inside your head,” Shinsuke says, a sort of longing in his eyes, though he is laughing. “It seems so loud and fun there. And all over the place, too. Why on earth did you suddenly bring me out here, to a country house that you _just_ bought on a whim?”

Atsumu shrugs. “I just missed you, is all,” he says. “You've been so hard at work lately, I've barely been able to get a hold of you.” 

“Sorry,” Shinsuke says. “We just finished this season's harvest. And we're particularly lucky this year, because our crops grew so healthy.” 

“That’s thanks to me,” Atsumu says haughtily, “because I kept coming over to your farm. Even all the plants love me, after all. Christ, Shinsuke, whatever shall you do without me?” 

“I fear that I would perish, sire,” says Shinsuke, playing along. He does that a lot now with Atsumu, going along with his stupid jokes. “For I am unable to exist without your presence.” 

“You better be.” Atsumu smiles fondly, pulling Shinsuke close to plant a kiss on his forehead. It's quiet out here, just the two of them secluded from all civilization save for each other's touch. And in the countryside, all the world's their empire. 

“Shinsuke,” Atsumu calls. 

Shinsuke senses the nervousness in his voice, the kind of quiet jitters that he tries to mask with a half-hearted false bravado. But there's something else too. There, in between his vocal chords, is a resolve that seemed too tough for even a stray asteroid to crush underneath its weight. Shinsuke wonders what it's about. “Yeah?” he responds, pulling back so he can look Atsumu in the eyes. 

Atsumu takes in a long, deep breath, and in the process he becomes aware of his own breathing, and suddenly forgets how to let his lungs run its course on its own. He bites his lips, pressing them together in an effort to keep them from trembling. 

“What is it?” Shinsuke asks. 

“I love you,” Atsumu says. The words come out of his mouth, then, the way piranhas hunt for blood, thirsty and eager and hungry, as rapid as the fire burning in his lungs. “I've known that for a while now. Though I never really told you.” He clears his throat, not letting a moment of silence fall between them. He hasn't finished his piece yet, and he's not particularly raring for Shinsuke to speak before he's finished. “And I want to make you mine.” He pauses, taking a moment to breathe. “I want to make this real. Official. Legitimate. Certified.” He winces. “Aren't you going to say something? I'm running out of adjectives here.” 

Shinsuke blinks. “Oh, was that my cue?” he asks innocently.

“Yeah, I was hoping that you were gonna cut me off when I started rambling,” Atsunu says sheepishly, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. 

Shinsuke laughs. He traces the curves of Atsumu's face with his eyes, drinking in every inch of his skin, diving into the depths of his eyes. The dip of his philtrum, like a short, dried-up canal. The trail that marked his jawline, a steep and sharp goat path that only the most dedicated and passionate hitchhiker can walk on. The way his lips parted, a small opening that led to a cave of unexplored wonders. 

“I love you, too,” Shinsuke tells him. 

That night, Shinsuke lays Atsumu on the bed, tracing his body, not just his face, with his fingers, not just his eyes. He finds every part of Atsumu that's traditionally hidden beneath articles of clothing and marks them with his tongue, with his teeth, with his lips. He lets Atsumu take him in, and he explores Atsumu's mouth, too, touching the back of his throat until tears gather in the corner of his eyes. 

There’s urgency in their intimate dance, a hurried rush to feel the other as much as they can, but they savor each second, each heated moment, their limbs an elegant tangle of lust.

Atsumu's fingers find Shinsuke's behind, reaching as far as he can, trying to feel how high up inside Shinsuke he can go with just his hands. When he's all loosened up, Atsumu enters him in one slow, agonizing motion, savoring the sensation as much as he can, moaning at the feel of Shinsuke's walls closing up around him. 

The bed shakes and groans when they move in a tango of sweat and skin and sighs, desperately bringing the other as close to their body as they can get, and it still isn't enough. Even when the space between them is next to nothing, Atsumu still feels it inadequate, and it fuels his fire even more. He's burning now, with the desire to perhaps devour Shinsuke whole. 

Shinsuke's face is turned to him, legs spread open as Atsumu continues to thrust. His eyes are shut tight, pure ecstasy on his face, high on the pleasure, and still, always, wanting more, more, more. 

Shinsuke comes first, Atsumu not long after, still inside Shinsuke, whose cum had hit Atsumu square in the face, and Atsumu finds that he doesn't care and swoops in to capture Shinsuke's mouth in a kiss, hungry and raw and desperate. 

This is not the first time they made love, but it's the first time that they confessed it as it is: love. 

There is immense pleasure in sex, and it's overwhelming in the heat of the moment, when lust clouds all judgement and blurs critical thinking. When the thirst for more pounding and kissing and touching becomes almost insatiable. But there's more pleasure, Atsumu finds, in what comes after, when the lust gives way to exhaustion and the heat begins to cool down. 

There's pleasure, too, in holding your lover in your arms and to be held by him as you lay in bed, naked skin against naked skin, holding each so tightly it's almost as if you've both become one entity. 

And there is no greater pleasure than holding him and whispering a song of love into his hair as your eyes start to close, and there are stars behind your eyelids. 

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


The wedding isn’t as much of a thing to celebrate as it is a thing to dread. Even after the ceremony proper has long since been over and done with, the sinking feeling in Atsumu’s stomach is still there, ever so present as he sits on the head table beside Kiyoomi, spotlight in his eyes, making him feel itchy and stuffy all over. He examines the ring in his finger, wondering sullenly how something as small as this can have an impact so large in his life, how a tiny metal band around his finger can chain him down like shackles at his feet.

He doesn’t speak to Kiyoomi, doesn’t even look at him, and Kiyoomi gives him the favor of doing the same. Atsumu picks at his food, eating miniscule spoonfuls at a time. He looks over at the people. The reception is small and exclusive — only certain people are allowed inside the room where the two grooms sat, newly wed, though their fathers made sure to host a separate feast for the locals and regular people who want to join in the celebration. The only ones invited were the people closest to their families: relatives, family friends, and a couple of hand-picked employees. He sees his brother sitting beside Rintarou, laughing and talking as if his twin isn’t having the most terrible night of his life. Of course, Atsumu shouldn’t blame him; he doesn’t know. As much as Atsumu trusts his literal counterpart, the thing between him and Shinsuke had been something he wanted to keep only for himself, something that sets him apart from the other version of himself. Atsumu sighs for what is the fifth time already. He forces himself to look back down on his plate. He knows Isamu invited the Kitas, and he knows that Shinsuke is somewhere in the crowd. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he sees Shinsuke, right here, right now, right when the thing that split them apart has solidified, taken shape and physical form. In the image of a small ring on his finger. He’d probably lose it.

“Look a little more alive, would you?” Kiyoomi hisses. “I hate this just as much as you, but they don’t expect you to look so grumpy on your wedding day.”

Atsumu sits a little straighter. “Would you look at that,” Atsumu says. There’s no irritating smirk on his face, but Kiyoomi hears it in his voice. “You actually said something smart, Omi-kun.”

“Miya, have I ever told you how annoying you are?”

“Only a few hundred times,” Atsumu says with a shrug. The tension in his shoulders have eased, and the stiffness in his muscles have been released. The familiar routine of exchanging near scathing remarks with Kiyoomi must be making this awful situation at the very least bearable. “And I regret to say this, Omi-kun, but it’s Sakusa now.”

Kiyoomi makes a face. “Ugh,” he says. “Don’t remind me. You don’t deserve to take my name.”

“Would you rather have taken mine, then?” Atsumu’s smirk is real now, and it’s as infuriating as ever. “Miya Kiyoomi does have a nice ring to it, don't you think?” His voice is thoughtful. “Damn, I shouldn’t have sacrificed my surname. I was in a bad place when they asked. They took advantage of my vulnerable state!”

Kiyoomi’s eyes narrow for a fraction of a second at Atsumu’s last two sentences, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask, and the temptation to know more about it is gone.

Atsumu sighs, finishing the rest of his food. He wants to go home, wants to hide under his sheets and hope that this is all just some ridiculous nightmare he can wake up from. And with a pang, he realizes that the home he had always known won’t be the one he comes back to tonight. He turns his head to look at Kiyoomi, eyes blank. For some reason, he feels a sort of resentment towards the man. It’s irrational, and he can’t quite place it, but he feels it and it’s there. And he lets himself feel it anyway, even though he knows Kiyoomi’s not the one to blame, because he can’t get angry at his father and Kiyoomi’s, which leaves nowhere else for him to place that anger but the man beside him.

When Isamu tells them to kiss for the crowd, Atsumu feels as if his insides are being dragged through rocky terrain. They stand, and underneath the bright spotlight that seemed as if it could rival the sun, Kiyoomi snakes a hand around Atsumu’s waist, wide palm seeking solace in the small of his back. Pulls him in. Plants his mouth on Atsumu’s. Through his tuxedo, he can feel the warmth of Kiyoomi’s hand so acutely he thought for a second it was directly on his skin, without the barrier of fabric.

Kiyoomi’s lips are cold. Atsumu guesses it’s because of the champagne he drank. His head is tilted so he hides Atsumu’s face from the audience. His eyes are closed, Atsumu’s aren’t, though his hand finds its way to the broad of Kiyoomi’s back. And all the while his heart beats the same rhythm as it always had been, longing for Shinsuke’s lips instead.

Atsumu pulls away, cutting the kiss short. He feels as if he had committed a crime, kissing Kiyoomi, though his strings are no longer tied to anyone. It’s their second time, the first being at the wedding proper, but this one is more intimate, in Atsumu’s perspective. The kiss at the wedding ceremony proper had been done out of duty; this one’s for audience impact. Guilt rises from the pit of his stomach, making its way up his esophagus. He feels bile at the back of his throat, and all of a sudden he wants to throw up. But he meets Kiyoomi’s eyes, challenging him, pushing the bile back down his throat. Neither one backs down.

“What passionate gazes,” Ryuga teases wryly, chuckling. “Sons, I hope you’re not forgetting that there are others in this room.”

“I think they’re eager to get their hands on each other,” Isamu says with a laugh, and the audience follows his lead as Atsumu and Kiyoomi take their seats again, hands curled into fists, stiff at their sides, faking smiles for the guests and the cameras.

As Atsumu gazes back at the crowd, sickness in his bones, his gaze, like metal drawn to a magnet, falls on Shinsuke, who is staring at him from the shadows.

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


When the guests disperse, save for Osamu, Rintarou, and Kiyoomi’s siblings, Isamu and Ryuga pull Atsumu and Kiyoomi aside, excitement in their eyes. For what reason, Atsumu doesn’t know. Frankly, he thinks that their fathers are a little too enthusiastic about meddling in their now-married lives. Well, he thinks, what is it this time? Bring it on. Surely nothing can be worse than this.

Whoever said the general warning to be careful what one wishes for was correct, because Atsumu finds out the hard way that, yes, there is, in fact, something that can be worse than this silly little wedding ceremony.

“We want you to plan for a housewarming party to be held in a week’s time, after you get home from the honeymoon,” Ryuga says. “Have you already decided where you want to go?”

Atsumu barely suppresses a groan; Kiyoomi makes them aware of his distaste at the idea without restraint.

“Are you serious?” he asks. “I’m sorry, did you just conveniently forget to mention that we’re supposed to go on a _honeymoon_?” His eyes look exhausted, though there are no bags underneath them. They just look dull and lifeless, as if there’s so much he’d rather do than slave his life away as his father’s most elaborate publicity stunt to win the favor of the masses.

“A honeymoon,” Atsumu repeats. He feels his head buzz with lightheadedness, like a headache starting to take form. “And may I ask why we weren’t made aware of this?”

“I was under the assumption that it was implied already,” Isamu says with a shrug. “Besides, people would be expecting the two of you to take some time for yourselves after the big day.” He grins. “You don’t actually have to have sex, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Maybe Atsumu is also partly at fault for not wanting to deal with the wedding preparations so much that he’d forgotten to ask if a post-nuptial vacation was part of the deal. “I find it disturbing that the thought of me having sex ever crossed your mind,” Atsumu says, mildly uncomfortable.

“Isn’t this enough for you yet?” Kiyoomi asks his father, exasperation so loud in his voice that Atsumu starts to worry he’d lose his temper in front of their fathers.

“Come now, son,” Ryuga says lightly. “What’s a marriage without a honeymoon? What’s a brand new house without a party in celebration for its purchase? You’ve already been wed anyway; might as well make a bigger spectacle of it.”

“So you’re milking this for all it’s worth, is what you’re saying,” Kiyoomi says darkly. “Your son’s life is nothing more than a display of your power, is that it?”

Ryuga’s face darkens, and Atsumu knows Kiyoomi crossed a line.

He just wants to get this over with, so he declares a quick verbal affirmation and pulls Kiyoomi outside of the reception hall, immediately dropping his hand when the door closes with a satisfying slam. 

Kiyoomi glares at him. “Don’t tell me you’re actually going along with this,” he says bitterly, despite already knowing the answer.

Atsumu rubs his temples with his hands. “I already said yes; you heard me,” he says exasperatedly. “And it’s not like we have any choice.”

“You could at least try and let them know that you don’t like it,” Kiyoomi spits out.

“For what reason?” Atsumu demands. “Nothing’s going to change anyway; we always end up doing what they want.” He inhales sharply, closing his eyes. “Let’s just go home, alright? I’m fucking tired.”

Home. It feels odd, calling a place he’s never seen, never been to, “home”. This is what he’s going to have to get used to now, he supposes with a resigned sigh. 

Instead of the usual lavish three-storey childhood mansion with a lawn that stretched for yards all around the house, of which the grass had been littered with the ghosts of Atsumu’s youthful footprints, he comes home to an empty, fenced, two-storey residence with Atsumu’s new surname printed on the gate pillar. It’s huge, and the designers clearly have done their work well, for both the exterior and interior are pleasing to Atsumu’s eyes, but it’s so far in distance and in appearance from Atsumu’s old place that he starts to feel homesick immediately.

“Let’s just talk about the house-warming party when we get back home.” Atsumu says as he walks toward what looked like one of the bedrooms. “If you’re not going to sleep yet, 

you can decide where you want to go for the damn honeymoon; I don’t really care. I’m going to bed.”Kiyoomi wrinkles his nose. “Without washing up?”

“My exhaustion outweighs my disgust, so yes, husband, I’m sleeping without taking a shower.” He barely has time to yawn before he falls head first onto the bed, knocked out the second his body touches the sheets. He doesn’t even bother to get under the covers because he’s already asleep before he could even think to.

He’s woken up a long while later by Kiyoomi’s insistent shaking. “What the fuck is it?” he demands, voice muffled as he buries his face further into the pillow. “I’m trying to sleep here.”

What Kiyoomi says next sends a shiver down his spine, jolting him awake. “There’s only one bed.”

He sits up quickly, rubbing his eyes. Before him stands a clean and nearly sparkling Kiyoomi. He’s wrapped a bathrobe around himself, and peeking from underneath are his silk pajamas. Atsumu would have made fun of him if his night clothes weren’t so similar. “What do you mean there’s only one bed?”

“I mean there’s only one bed,” Kiyoomi says, annoyed at having to repeat what is supposed to be an obvious and straightforward sentence.

“Like there’s only one bed in this bedroom or…?”

“Dammit, Miya, there’s only one bed in the entire house!” Kiyoomi says. Then, with a disgusted voice, “And you’ve gotten your germs all over it.”

“Hey!” Atsumu protests, but doesn’t say anything else in his defense because, well, it’s true. 

Kiyoomi sighs. “I don’t want to sleep next to you,” he announces, as if Atsumu would claim otherwise. “I propose that we alternate between the couch and the bed. Tonight, I’ll take the couch since you’ve already marked your territory with bacteria.” (Atsumu frowns at this.) “I’ll just change the sheets when I take the bed.”

“Fine,” Atsumu says, “whatever. You could have just waited till tomorrow to tell me all that, you know.”

“And let you have a peaceful night's sleep without knowing about my generous sacrifice?”

“I’d hardly call that a sacrifice. I bet the couch is just as comfortable as the bed,” Atsumu mutters. “Even if it weren't, I still wouldn’t give a damn.”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes and doesn’t say anything else. He turns from the door and closes it behind him.

Now that he’s awake, Atsumu finds that he has rested enough to be able to muster the energy to take a shower, so he goes over to the closet, opening it wide. All his clothes are inside, along with Kiyoomi’s, folded and hung neatly in place. With that in mind, he enters the bathroom, assuming that since their fathers had arranged for their new home to be well-stocked with their things, surely there would be a towel or two in the bathroom. His assumptions are proven right when he spots a towel on the rack hammered to the tiled walls. 

He makes for the shower, but double takes when he sees the tub. Seeing it made him want to relax in a pool of warm water, so he preps his bath and takes his clothes off. Once it’s warm enough, he steps in, letting out a relaxed sigh as the warmth of the water envelops him like a hug. 

There's a flat screen TV on the wall across him, so he flicks through the channels before settling on some random Netflix comedy show. 

Once he's satisfied, he gets out before his skin starts to prune and walks over to the shower to rinse the soap off his body as the water in the tub drains slowly. 

After getting dressed in his pajamas (of course they're silk too — this is precisely why he can't say shit about Kiyoomi's night clothes) he opens the bedroom door and heads for the kitchen downstairs, thirsty. On his way there, he passes Kiyoomi lying motionless on the couch, which is fortunately long enough that he fits perfectly without having to curl up and hug his knees to his chest. 

Atsumu's gaze doesn't linger for long, and he walks up to the fridge and pours himself a glass of water, the liquid cold against the inside of his throat. 

  
  
  
  
  


The next morning, they both rise at around nine thirty. None of two are particularly eager to wake up after such an exhausting evening, so they both didn't set an alarm before getting to bed, assuming that the other would do it. (They had no hired help yet; their fathers had told them that there wouldn’t be any until after the housewarming party, so they're on their own for now.) As a result, no one had been able to cook early enough that the food is already prepared and waiting for them on the table when they're up and awake. 

“I'm starving,” Kiyoomi complains. “I need rice.”

“Let's just have breakfast food delivered,” Atsumu says, already scrolling on his phone, looking for something he wants to eat. He has his feet on the coffee table, an action which Kiyoomi had wrinkled his nose at before ultimately deciding not to say anything. His arm is draped lazily on the side of the couch.

“No, let's eat out,” Kiyoomi says. “On the way to the airport. I’m sure our parents would appreciate us parading around on our way to our sweet, sweet honeymoon.” 

“Yeah, okay, let's do that,” Atsumu says in defeat, massaging his brow ridge with his index finger and thumb. “And where are we going? Have you decided yet?”

“Maldives.” A pause. “We’re flying private.”

“Nice,” Atsumu says. “It’s pretty there.”

Kiyoomi claims the upstairs bathroom first, so Atsumu has no choice but to use the one downstairs, not wanting to have to wait. Clutching his towel and some of his toiletries, he heads down and takes a quick shower. When he gets out, Kiyoomi is still in the bath, so he gets dressed, throws some of his clothes into a suitcase, and gets the car ready.

Fifteen more minutes later, Kiyoomi finally emerges from the house, hauling his suitcase in the trunk before going to occupy the passenger seat. “I think there are restaurants at the airport. We can eat after we check in, or something,” he mumbles, slumping down his chair and looking out the window. He's already fastened his seatbelt, so Atsumu doesn't need to tell him. “I want to get there as soon as possible and get this over with.”

“How bitchy, Omi-kun, and this early in the morning, too! What am I, your driver?” Atsumu says as he pulls out the driveway. 

“Sure,” Kiyoomi says with a shrug. “Or would you rather I call you my personal attendant?”

“You wound me.”

“Then suffer.”

  
  
  
  
  


On an eighteen-hour flight, Atsumu would be lying if he said he didn’t expect him and Kiyoomi to hold a conversation. Surely even Kiyoomi would have to succumb to his innate need for human interaction, right?

Atsumu quickly learns how wrong he is. Kiyoomi barely looks at Atsumu for the entirety of their flight, keeping mostly to himself by either sleeping or looking out the window in deep thought. Sometimes he’d stare at his phone, mask pulled down, lips curled into a small but unmistakable smile. He’d only talked to Atsumu if the latter initiated the conversation, and even then his tone is clipped, his words few.

Atsumu wonders what had gotten into him, but doesn’t ask.

When they land and arrive at their designated resort, the scenery does little to placate Kiyoomi’s somber mood, who’d been frowning at his phone ever since the plane’s wheels struck the concrete runway. Knowing that Kiyoomi’s grumpiness would only give them a bad impression, Atsumu volunteers to approach the front desk and inform the attendants of their reservation. Once he’d gotten the keys, he signals for Kiyoomi to follow him to their room. 

He opens the door to a large suite with two queen-sized beds on opposite ends, each flanked by orange cylindrical lamps and wooden nightstands. Below the wall-mounted air conditioner are wide, glass double-doors that lead to the balcony facing the beach. Near the main suite door is the bathroom, situated across the small kitchen-slash-dining room. There’s a loveseat by one of the nightstands, right next to a sizable potted plant, and a single-seater near the other bed.

The bellboy leaves their suitcases by the closet, bowing goodbye before he leaves. Kiyoomi is silent as he sits on one of the beds, leaving Atsumu to take the other. He’s glaring at his phone again, and if looks could kill, the device would have already been just another broken piece of useless metal in his hand.

Atsumu stares at him, wondering what’s troubling him so gravely. But he’d just gotten off an eighteen-hour flight; he isn’t in the mood to play guessing games for a man he barely cared about. “Can you wake me up in an hour?” he mumbles, arm draped over his eyes. “I want to go swimming before dinner.”

If Kiyoomi agreed or even heard him, he didn’t know, because before he could find out, his eyes are already closing shut, and the weight of his body melts into the soft mattress.

  
  
  
  
  


It’s no surprise that the beach reminds him of Shinsuke. It seems most things remind him of his old lover, these days. He suspects it has something to do with the longing in his chest that seemed near impossible to quell. 

When he wakes from his post-flight slumber, the first thing he does is change into his swimming trunks. Kiyoomi had gone somewhere, if his empty bed were any indication. His feet bring him to the beach. He surrounds himself with water, eyes trained on the horizon before him where the sun is slowly making its descent. He thinks of what it’d be like if he had gone here with Shinsuke instead of Kiyoomi. Obviously there wouldn’t be this much distance between them. And it would feel less like a business trip and more of an actual honeymoon.

A spark of half-hearted resentment rises from his chest like bile. But he supposes that he can’t really blame Kiyoomi for being here instead of Shinsuke, nor can he blame the former for being so moody and unapproachable. 

He stays in the water until his skin prunes, watching as the final rays of the sun disappear beneath the line where the sky and the sea met. By the shore, some torches have been lit to provide light for those who are about to eat dinner by the sea. Lining the beach are groups of people sat around tables — loud families gathered to celebrate someone’s day of birth, groups of friends eager to have finally tasted freedom, couples out for a romantic getaway.

He rises from the water and walks back to their suite, intending to look for Kiyoomi so they can have dinner together. He pushes his wet hair out of his face, smiling and nodding at the people he walks past. He spots their room door after a few minutes of walking. The door doesn’t make a sound when he opens it.

“Please don’t say that,” he hears someone say from the bathroom. Kiyoomi.

He freezes, unsure of what to do. As much as he dislikes Kiyoomi, he doesn’t want to overstep his boundaries and listen in to a conversation he’s clearly not meant to hear. He clears his throat to make his presence known. “Omi-kun?” he calls.

Kiyoomi coughs from inside the bathroom. “Can we talk about this when I get back?” he hisses under his breath, but Atsumu still hears it echo behind the door, which swings open a couple of seconds later. “What is it?” says Kiyoomi.

“Let’s eat,” he says simply.

Kiyoomi gives him a long look, perhaps trying to gauge how much of his private conversation Atsumu had heard. “Okay,” he says finally. “Go get yourself dry.”

After Atsumu dries himself off with a towel and tugs on an unbuttoned polo shirt, he emerges from the bathroom. Kiyoomi is sitting on the single-seater, eyes glazed over and not really seeing. He walks over to him, waving his hand in front of Kiyoomi’s unfocused face. (Briefly, Atsumu wonders who Kiyoomi had been talking to and what had happened, before he pushes the thought out of his mind.) “Omi-kun, are you planning on getting a move on anytime this century?”

Kiyoomi snaps out of it at once. He stands, pocketing his phone as if in a daze. “Right,” he says. “Sorry.”

To his credit, at dinner, Kiyoomi seems to make a small effort to push his problems out of his mind by making light conversation, responding to Atsumu as best he could, though Atsumu can tell that it is still bothering him. 

He doesn’t comment on it.

“Don’t you want to swim?” Atsumu asks him through a mouthful of lobster. (Kiyoomi regards him distastefully.) “The water's really cool, but it's especially cold at night.”

“Sure,” Kiyoomi says with a shrug. He downs the last of his juice. “Isn't Maldives famous for its bioluminescent plankton?”

Atsumu nods eagerly. “Have you seen it for yourself? Itʼs beautiful, Omi-kun! It's a whole universe in the water. When the waves are strong enough, large numbers get washed on the shore, and they glow beneath your feet like you're walking on stars.”

Kiyoomi nods in interest. “I've never been here before,” he admits, “so I've yet to see it in person.” 

Atsumu didn't really care about such things, once. When he first heard of the phenomenon, he didn't think it was any different than looking up at the night sky and seeing the twinkling stars. It had been Shinsuke who had gotten him all excited about it, when he told him that he and his family were going to Maldives for a vacation a year ago. 

“Oh, you should show me pictures of you swimming in the sea with the glowing plankton!” Shinsuke had cried. “I've always wanted to see those in person.” 

“It’s just like in the pictures, right?” Atsumu had said, not really sharing his excitement, but also not wanting rain on Shinsuke's enthusiasm. 

Shinsuke had given him a bewildered look. “No, silly,” he'd said. “I read accounts of people having seen it in for themselves, and they all agreed that it's more beautiful than what the camera can capture.” 

And Atsumu hadn't really believed him, still convinced that it's no big deal, until he'd seen it for himself. When the shore started to glow, he'd stared at the water in quiet marvel, awestruck, mouth hanging slightly open, eyes wide, as the breath was knocked out of his lungs. After taking pictures like he'd promised, he rang Shinsuke, excited, not bothering to look around if his father and brother were around. 

“You were right!” he'd said into the phone. “This is absolutely stunning! Better than the pictures!” 

Shinsuke laughed. “Didn't I tell you?” he'd said. “What's it like?” 

“The plankton get all excited when I move,” Atsumu had told him. “They're like little, harmless stars. I'm walking on stars, Shinsuke-kun!” He smiles. “I wish you were here.” 

“Yeah,” Shinsuke had said. “Me too.” 

Atsumu shakes the memory from his head. It's still a sore subject for him, and even more so now that he's back here without Shinsuke still. He'll be walking on the stars with a different man. 

He finishes the last of his food and wipes his mouth. “You should get changed into your swimming trunks now,” he tells Kiyoomi. “I'll be waiting here for you.”

Kiyoomi complies without much complaint, and even wordlessly accepts Atsumu's button-down shirt when he hands it to him to bring back to their room. 

He comes back a short while later after an attendant clears their table of plates and glasses. He clears his throat to make Atsumu aware of his presence. 

“They usually occur around mid-summer to early October,” Atsumu tells him as they walk side-by-side on the beach. “We can see them clearly where there's less torchlight, so we should go farther from the people.” 

Atsumu leads him to a more secluded part of the island, where there is dense jungle foliage instead of cabins and tourists. And sure enough, in the darkness of the dim moonlit sky, the sea comes to life before their eyes. 

It starts small at first, tiny specks of blue drifting along the shoreline, until the surf crashes the coast enough times to bring handfuls of the stuff closer to them. It's almost supernatural in its appearance, bright blue radiance dotting the waterline like tiny water suns. Every step they take on the coastline leaves a sapphire footprint in its wake, glowing like neon signs. 

The picturesque scene pulls the air from his lungs and bloodstream like a cosmic vacuum, and it's as if he's seeing it for the first time. Beside him, Kiyoomi lets out a small, almost inaudible, gasp. 

“Wow,” he says. 

“Beautiful, isn't it?” Atsumu says in response, voice slightly shaky and out of breath. He steps on the water, further exciting the plankton. Looking behind him, he gestures for Kiyoomi to follow him. He crouches in the water, moving his arms around him. “Are we not lucky to have witnessed this on a last-minute trip?” 

Kiyoomi lets out an appreciative hum, entering the sea himself. The water around him lights his face up like azure fire as he moves, white ripples reflecting on his skin in abrupt flashes. Whatever had been troubling him before bore no weight on his shoulders now, his features free of all signs of worry and agitation. “They’re like fireflies in the water,” he says, voice light.

Atsumu allows himself to float, the lower half of his body submerged beneath the waves, the upper half breaking the surface. He releases a breath, unsure of how to proceed. He remembers Kiyoomi telling him that they aren’t friends, so Kiyoomi’s business is none of his. And yet.

And yet Atsumu is tempted to ask him what’s wrong, wants to know what’s bothering him so he can help. He has his assumptions about Kiyoomi’s predicament, and he’s fairly certain it’s similar to his, but he can’t really say for sure. What’s definite though is that, if he asks Kiyoomi to open up to him, the man would most likely push him away, which would ruin what truce they have right now.

Atsumu would really prefer if they don’t spend the rest of this trip hating each other even more.

“Maybe it’s not so bad that they forced us to go on a honeymoon, huh?” he attempts to joke, not really expecting a response, but Kiyoomi surprises him with a laugh. He nearly drowns. Lifting himself from the water, he shakily attempts to find his footing, coughing to eject the water from his system. 

Kiyoomi glances at him. “You okay?” he asks, puzzled.

“Yeah,” says Atsumu with a wave of his hand. “Just startled.”

Kiyoomi smirks. “What, with my laugh?” 

“Yes, actually,” Atsumu says with a solemn nod. “I didn’t know you were capable of such blatant displays of enjoyment.”

Kiyoomi pushes a wave of glowing water at his face. “Very funny,” he says blankly. After a while, he says, “And yeah, maybe it’s not so bad.” Blue light illuminates his face from below, making his eyes look shiny and bright. They hold each other’s gaze for a few moments, unable to look away. 

Kiyoomi breaks the silence first, pushing himself out of the water, stars twinkling on his skin. “I’m heading back,” he says, bringing a hand to his face to wipe it down. 

“Had enough of the galaxy in the sea?” Atsumu says, moving his arms around him, causing ripples to form on the surface. 

“I’ve had enough of you,” Kiyoomi says, rolling his eyes as he walks away, waving his hand at Atsumu without turning back. 

Atsumu laughs, the wind carrying his voice from the sea to the land. He flops on his back, letting his body float. His heart feels so light, almost as if it’s soaring. Perhaps this whole ordeal wouldn’t be so bad at all. He and Kiyoomi would learn to stop hating each other so much, and when all this is finally over, he’d have Shinsuke to go back to.

He sighs contentedly, grinning at the moon with all the stars floating around him. Of course all will be well soon. When had his life ever gone wrong?

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_July 5, 2019_

_Dearest Shinsuke,_

_Isn’t this romantic? I know you’re the sentimental type, so I figure it’s fitting to send you a hand-written declaration of love on your birthday. You owe me a kiss or two for this!_

_Now where to begin? I bet this is the part where I enumerate everything I love about you, list down all the things that make you who you are — the man I love. But I’m sure you’re aware that writing isn’t really in my repertoire, so you’ll have to forgive me if my words fall short of exquisite._

_I guess this is the time I finally admit that even before we properly met at the elevator that day, I had checked you out a couple of times before. I know, I know; it’s unprofessional. But humanity is drawn to pretty things. I’m human; you’re pretty — can you guess where I’m going with this?_

_And I don’t know if you’re aware, but you look so stunning in the fields, sunlight beating on your back, sweat tracing your skin. And when you look up to swipe your hair out of your forehead with your arm — dear God. Woops, did I say too much? I’m not sure if I’m supposed to romanticize that, and I’m sorry if it’s inappropriate, but there’s something magical about you being in your element that just… Oh, I don’t know, I ran out of words. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?_

_Do you know that you’re the first person ever who made me want to disobey my dad? Ha, yeah, it’s true. Shows how much hold you have on me, huh? I grew up in a home where his words are gospel, and I never really had a problem with that. It worked for me and my brother, and it worked for him, so I had nothing to complain about. No reason to want to try and climb out the fence and see the world for myself. (That was a metaphor for breaking the rules. I think.)_

_Until that day on the elevator. I couldn’t stop thinking of you even until you left and the doors closed behind you. I doubt I’d scare you off by saying this since you’ve had to deal with me for over a year now, but you just wouldn’t leave my mind for days. I knew I had to see you again. And again. And again._

_I probably annoyed you at first. But you fell for me anyway._

_I love you. There’s not enough characters in all three writing systems to express my love for you._

_Sometimes I feel bad that we have to keep our relationship a secret, because I know it pains you. As it does me. And I’m sorry if this sounds selfish, but I’d rather love you in secret, in the shadows only the two of us can move in, than not love you at all._

_Did that sound too extreme? I heard the poets have a talent for extremities and hyperboles, so I thought I should have my turn at it._

_Anyway, this is getting too long, and I’m starting to cramp. Happy birthday, my dearest. Know that I’ll love you until my heart shrivels and decays. Urgh, that sounded morbid._

_From this life to the next._

_By the way, I sprayed perfume all over the paper so it’d smell like me. You can take a whiff of it every night when you go to bed, so you’ll always be reminded of me even in your dreams._

  
  


_Love, Atsumu_

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


Atsumu quickly figures out that whatever spell of temporary truce had fallen over him and Kiyoomi on the trip had been just that — temporary. The moment their airplane lands on the runway, Kiyoomi whips out his phone and busies himself with it, the world already falling away around him, long forgotten. His eyebrows curl in on themselves as his face morphs to a frown.

Atsumu can tell that the only thing stopping him from calling whoever he’s been texting with is the fact that he is in public, a handful of witnesses in the very room he’s in.

Kiyoomi only nods soundlessly when Atsumu suggests they should talk about the party plans over breakfast. “How’d you like a taste of Miya Food Corp. cuisine?” Atsumu had said, wiggling his eyebrows.

A car waits for them by the exit of the airport’s arrival wing, and they arrive at the place no less than a few minutes later. They leave their suitcases in the car parked on the parking lot beside one of the Miya family’s many restaurants. When they get in, Atsumu waves at today’s workers, one of whom walks over to their table and hands them the menu, later taking their orders.

They talk about their plans for the housewarming party over the food — well, talk is a very watered down euphemism. They’re mostly arguing; Atsumu is starting to think if Kiyoomi is doing all this on purpose just to piss him off. Atsumu just wants a simple celebration with some food and music, while Kiyoomi speculates that their fathers are most probably expecting more than that. So Atsumu broadens his horizons and suggests that they hire a catering service for a more fine-dining-esque feel, but Kiyoomi disapproves and tells him that fine dining is too fancy for a mere housewarming party.

Atsumu slams his glass down. “So what do you want to do?” he snaps. “Why don’t you plan everything yourself, then, since all you do is shut down my ideas?”

Kiyoomi wipes his mouth with a napkin and stands. (Atsumu doesn’t miss the way he glances at his phone quickly, as if waiting for a text.) “Isn’t that what planning is about,” he states as he moves to leave the restaurant. Atsumu follows without a glance back to wave goodbye and thanks to the workers, too heated to think about anything else other than arguing with Kiyoomi. “Approving and disapproving ideas?”

“Well, you seem to be doing a shit ton of disapproving and none of the approving,” Atsumu drawls sardonically, getting inside the car. The butler who had taken them here had matters to attend to, upon Ryuga’s insistence, so it’s just the two of them here, with Atsumu behind the wheel.

“There’s nothing to approve of.” He says it so casually, as if it’s nothing Atsumu should be infuriated about, that Atsumu wants to bash his head on the dashboard, even if that means getting the insides of his skull all over the car. He could just easily just get someone to clean it for him, anyway. Now the problem is avoiding imprisonment and how to explain it to Ryuga… 

He literally gets snapped out of his thoughts when Kiyoomi snaps his fingers in front of Atsumu’s face. “Are you planning on getting a move on anytime this century?” He says this with a small smirk on his lips.

“Haha, very funny,” Atsumu tells him sarcastically, narrowing his eyes at him and not moving to start the car. “How clever of you, Omi. Such an unprecedented remark.” He rolls his eyes, sighing to ease his nerves. He tries to steer the conversation back to the matter at hand. “And about the food for the party—”

“Can you stop talking about the damn food? I thought we already agreed that I would take care of it,” Kiyoomi ripostes.

Kiyoomi’s tone is irate, and it inflates Atsumu’s resentment towards him. “What is up with you today? What are you so fucking angry for?” he demands, raising his hands. “I’m just trying to do what I’m told!”

“So am I!” Kiyoomi snarls. Fury curls around his furrowed brows, the roots of his anger extending to his blazing eyes, fueling his heated words. 

“Yeah, which is why we’re on the same side, so why are you angry at me?” Atsumu says. In retrospect, Atsumu should have known that Kiyoomi is mad at him because there’s no one else to take that rage out on, nowhere else to put the hate. He should have known that, because that’s what he, too, feels. Because he’s on the same boat, and they were both just thrown into all this for politics. And he should have taken a few moments to clear his head and understand that Kiyoomi is possibly going through something not unlike his own problems. But all he can think of at the moment is, _Why should I let him walk all over me? If he can be angry, then so can I._

“No, we’re not.” Kiyoomi looks at him, and for a split second the wrath in his eyes part just enough for sadness to peak out — what he’s sad about, Atsumu doesn’t know, nor does he even care — but it’s gone before Atsumu’s own rage falters. “We’re not the same.” His jaw sets, clearly clenching his teeth. He stares at Atsumu for another long, wordless moment, before he opens the door and climbs out of the car, slamming it shut. He walks away without another glance, fists balled in his coat pockets.

And, perhaps thinking that Atsumu is no longer watching, he takes out his phone and places it next to his ear.

“What the fuck is up with that guy?” Atsumu says to himself, staring at Kiyoomi’s back as he walks further and further away, until he turns around the corner and Atsumu can no longer see him. Seriously, of all people he had to be married to, why him? He stops, thoughts of Shinsuke once again making their way to Atsumu’s mind. How he looked after seeing Atsumu and Kiyoomi kiss at the reception…

Atsumu shakes his head. Now is not the time to dwell on that. He still has that stupid fucking party to worry about, and now his team’s one man short. That’s probably a good thing, he consoles himself. Without Kiyoomi, he could probably do the planning faster, now that he’s got no one to waste time fighting with. The only problem is ensuring that Ryuga and Isamu don’t find out that he’s alone now.

And— oh yeah, right. That’s another problem, too: he’s all alone now.

He rests his head on the steering wheel, wondering how the hell his life went so wrong like this. He’s sure that he can handle all the planning crap, it’s just… it's awful. He doesn’t know how else to put it. He’s only been married for a few days and it's already so foul and he’s sick of it. And why does his father feel the need to control them now, anyway? Why do they have to have this fucking party— 

He groans, pulling his head back to lean on the driver’s seat. There’s no use lamenting it now. That wouldn’t change anything nor would it help in any way. Reaching for his phone, he calls his brother.

“Samu,” he whines. “Can you help me? I’m lonely.”

“You’re back already?” Osamu asks. “Where’s your husband?”

“Let’s not talk about him,” Atsumu says. “He’s so annoying, Samu. Always so angry at me. I don’t even know what I did wrong. He’s acting like he’s the only one forced into this. I didn’t even want to marry him. Christ. Save me from this hell, would you?”

“Maybe you breathed?” Osamu suggests. “Existed? Those are very heinous crimes, if you’re the culprit.”

“I fucking hate you, Samu,” Atsumu says, not blinking. “Can you come over and help me? You can bring Rintarou if he’s with you.”

There’s shuffling and faint voices on the other side. “Alright,” Osamu finally says. “We’ll be there in a bit.”

Atsumu times it just right so when he reaches his residence, Osamu and his boyfriend have just arrived. “Come in.” he says, opening the door for them. He knows Kiyoomi isn’t home, if the locked door is anything to go by. He briefly wonders where his spouse could be, but dismisses the thought when he remembers how the guy lashed out on him for no reason. He huffs, then leads Osamu and Rintarou to the living room.

“Pretty nifty place you got here,” Rintarou comments, looking around.

Atsumu shrugs. “It’s not exactly home,” he says, “but it’ll do.”

Osamu looks at him in sympathy, which Atsumu catches and recognizes immediately, so he tosses a throw pillow at his twin’s face. “Knock it off,” he says. “This isn’t a pity party. We’re here to work.”

If there’s one thing Atsumu would openly praise Rintarou for, it’s his efficiency. He’s the type who would figure out the best and easiest way possible to do something, which makes him a blessing to be around whenever planning and preparations are involved.

They spend the next few hours making calls and arrangements. Atsumu plays some music, just to make things less unbearable. At one point, Rintarou suggests hiring someone else to do this for them, but Osamu says no before Atsumu can even begin to speak. “It’s bad enough that Kiyoomi isn’t doing this with him,” he says, pointing his thumb at Atsumu, an indication of how much he knows his father’s ways. “If they found out that he had someone else do the work for him, going against what they asked him to do— well, let’s just say it’s nothing short of ugly.”

“How… extreme,” Rintarou says, perplexed.

“Yeah, well, father always had a thing for that,” Atsumu says. “Do you know about the time he asked Samu to, erm, what was it? Compute his taxes?”

“Yeah,” Osamu says with a laugh. “I had someone else do it for me, and he flipped. Says he wanted me to learn how to deal with numbers instead of just losing myself in the kitchen or something.” He looks at Atsumu. “This is probably another one of those life lesson things of his.”

Atsumu makes a face. “Since when did planning a housewarming party become an important life lesson?”

Osmau shrugs. “I don’t know; maybe he’s hoping that you and your husband could learn to get along by helping each other and whatnot.”

“Unfortunately for him, that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.” 

Miraculously, all the work is done by five thirty in the afternoon, and Rintarou sprawls all over the couch, letting his long limbs occupy all the space the chaise lounge has to offer. He falls asleep within minutes, exhausted. 

Osamu stands. “I’ll cook our dinner.” He walks to the kitchen.

“I’ll help,” Atsumu volunteers, stretching. He follows his brother to the kitchen, the one place where he lets Osamu boss him around. Here’s something he would never admit to anyone: he actually likes seeing his twin happy. The kitchen is where Osamu feels the most at home, and it’s where Atsumu gladly steps back and lets him take the reins. It’s only in cooking that Atsumu volunteers to be second to his brother.

“So what happened between you and Kiyoomi-kun?” Osamu asks without turning to look at Atsumu. He’s washing his hands as Atsumu prepares the chopping board and the knife. 

“It’s just like I told you,” Atsumu answers. Like a well-oiled machine, Atsumu moves to wash his hands the same time Osamu leaves the sink to look for the wok. “It’s in the cabinet above the stove,” Atsumu says, knowing what he’s searching for. Then he continues his previous line of thought, “He was suddenly cross at me for no reason. Of course I spoke back. I wasn’t going to let him yell at me and not do anything about it.”

Osamu shakes his head. He sets aside the wok and cooks two and a half cups of rice using the rice cooker. He doesn’t speak for a few minutes, and Atsumu stares at the floor, hands on the sink, back to his brother. “You didn’t even try to figure out why he was all moody?” he finally says, grabbing the wok to rinse the inside of it under the faucet. Atsumu snorts, placing some garlic bulbs and parsley under running water to wash them off. He peels the garlic bulbs, separates the cloves, removes the parsley leaves from the stems, then starts to mince them. “I told you, I didn’t do anything.”

“You married him,” Osamu points out. 

“And how is that my fault?” Atsumu says. “He consented to it too, you know. So it doesn’t make sense if he’s angry because of that.”

“You’re right,” Osamu amends. “But have you ever felt infuriated over this entire situation? And, I don’t know, maybe angry at father?”

Atsumu stops. He puts the knife down and thinks carefully about what to say next. Should he admit that he did? Obviously, Osamu would understand. He wouldn’t be asking this if he hadn’t. But Atsumu had been trying to forget about that anger, trying to bury it because he hated having to harbor negative feelings towards his own father. And he fears that admitting it to someone else would make it all too real.

Osamu turns on the stove and puts the wok on the center burner, then leans on one side of the black stove as he waits for the wok to dry. 

Atsumu must have been thinking for quite a while, because the rice cooker clicks. The switch shows that it’s in warming mode. “You know I don’t get angry at father,” is what he finally chooses to say.

Osamu glances at the wok. All the water droplets had completely evaporated, so he’d poured some olive oil on it. He’s supposed to add the garlic now, Atsumu knows, so he hands the bowl of minced garlic cloves over to Osamu, who takes it gratefully. 

“And you don’t think Kiyoomi-kun feels the same?” Osamu says carefully. “He can’t get angry at his father nor ours. So who else can he take it out on?” 

Atsumu ponders on this. He hates to admit it, but Osamu is right. Of course he is. They're both idiots, but Osamu usually has a better view on Atsumu's predicaments than him. Atsumu wonders if that's a thing, to be more well-versed in handling your twin's problems because in turn, Atsumu, too, tends to be more of help to Osamu on his own problems than the man in question himself. Perhaps it's a matter of perspective. The farther you get from the focal point, the more you see. 

“But it's unfair,” he protests quietly. “I'm angry too.”

“I'm not saying it's fair,” Osamu says lightly with a shrug. “I'm just calling it as it is. And you have the right to be angry too, of course. But your headspace is clearer than his, is it not? You wouldn't be having this conversation with me if that weren't true.” He clicks his tongue. “That being said, you should be the bigger person this time, Tsumu. You're married to him now. Do you really want to live under the same roof with someone you hate?”

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  


That night, after Osamu and Rintarou take their leave, Kiyoomi does not come home.

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Shinsuke holds Atsumu's hand the entire time they're inside the cinema. If Atsumu hadn't been wearing a mask, there's no way he could have hidden his smile. Not that he'd ever want to. He appreciates Shinsuke a lot and wants that to be known. If it weren't so frowned upon, he would have broadcasted it to the whole world. 

They walk out of the theatre, all smiles and laughter. “Did you like the movie?” Shinsuke asks, eyes crinkling with fondness. 

“Yeah,” Atsumu says with an enthusiastic nod, adjusting his face mask so it properly covers the parts of his face it’s supposed to cover. “Did you specifically choose a feel-good comedy for my birthday?” He loops an arm around Shinsuke's, then hides their intertwined hands in his coat pocket. “I know you’re more of a cynical cinephile.”

“It’s not cynicism; I just like more realistic films. Makes it easier to imagine that I’m living in the story instead of just being an outsider watching through the screen, a participant instead of an observer,” Shinsuke tells him. “And yes; I wanted to make you happy.” 

“Well, you succeeded, good sir,” Atsumu says. As they pass by the familiar girl behind the counter, Atsumu lowers his mask to wink at her and mouth a quick goodbye. Shinsuke waves at her. 

“I'm glad, then,” Shinsuke says. “Wanna stay over at my place for the night?” 

Having already told his father that he should hold a feeding program in his and Osamu’s name instead of a party for him with the excuse that he'd rather spend his day of birth alone at the beach (it’s a good thing Osamu shares his sentiments too, because he agrees and says he wants to be with Rintarou on the day), Atsumu has no celebration waiting for him at home, so he nods yes. 

Shinsuke drives them to his home. It's a thirty minute drive to the countryside, so he's not far from the farm, and only a couple of hours away from the city so it doesn't take long for them to get there. It's already dark, though, by the time Shinsuke finally pulls up the driveaway. 

Shinsuke leads Atsumu up the porch. It's not the first time Atsumu has been here, but this time somehow feels different. He can't exactly explain why, just that it's different. More intimate, perhaps? 

When Shinsuke opens the door, it's dark inside and Atsumu can't see a thing from where he's standing. Shinsuke lets Atsumu get in first. 

The first thing he notices is the smell. Sweet and fragrant at first, followed by something saliva-inducing. Atsumu immediately concludes that it must be food that he senses in the air. Then he notices the flower petals forming a line, from the front door to somewhere Atsumu can't make out. 

He laughs to himself. Classic Shinsuke, using clichés like this. He turns around to tease him, but there's no one behind him. Only the wind. 

It must be part of his surprise. 

Atsumu grins. What does Shinsuke have in store for him? he wonders. He's excited to find out, so it takes all of him not to sprint towards wherever this rose petal path leads to. Shinsuke prepared for this, after all, so he must savor it. Cherish it like he would if it were from his own mother. 

His heart aches at the thought of his mother, so he shakes it off and buries it somewhere he can't reach. It's his birthday, and Shinsuke has worked hard for this. He mustn't be anything short of happy. 

He walks slowly alongside the trail, letting the flowers guide him. All the while, his heart thumps with anticipation, but he forces himself to be patient. This will give Shinsuke ample time to perfect everything on his end, too, he thinks smugly to himself. 

He reaches the end of the trail, standing before a door that seems to lead outside. He opens it, and the door pushes some of the petals away as it moves in an arc.

“Happy birthday, love.” Shinsuke's voice is soft, and the absolute adoration in his eyes makes Atsumu's chest hurt. Atsumu walks over to him, arms wrapping around his toned body in a hug. “My treasure,” he murmurs into Atsumu's hair. 

“I love you,” Atsumu says. 

“I love you too.” Shinsuke kisses his forehead. When he pulls away, Atsumu sees that there is a sadness in his smile. “We can't eat out because people might see us,” he says. “So here.” He gestures to the table behind him, where tasty-looking dishes sat on shiny plates. There's a fancy candle standing at the center of it all, bathing the set up in warm, orange light. 

“I'd eat in a ditch as long as I'm with you,” Atsumu says. Inwardly, he cringes at how mushy he's become, but for now he can't care less. He's too happy for that. Though uncertain when exactly it had started, Shinsuke seems to be his serotonin power source now. 

“Damn,” Shinsuke says. “So I could have just brought you to a ditch instead of preparing all this?” 

Atsumu laughs, and they take a seat. 

It's generally cold in October, much to Atsumu's distaste, and even more so out here in the country, away from the polluted city air. But when his and Shinsuke's hands meet in the middle, he finds that the world is warm enough to thaw the near-winter air. 

“I love you, you know,” Shinsuke whispers, rubbing his thumb over Atsumu's knuckles. 

“I know,” Atsumu says back, voice equally soft. It's a somewhat ridiculous thought, but in that moment, his hand safely cradled in Shinsuke's grasp, he's certain that the world won't wake with them apart. 

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


The guests start arriving at around five, and by eight they've all finished eating dinner. Some are checking out the house, while some are drinking outside, where a number of tables and chairs have been set up. 

Kiyoomi, who showed up at eleven in the morning without so much as a glance or a nod at his husband, still isn't talking to Atsumu, but he manages to keep up the facade of a happy marriage by acting as if there's nothing wrong between them behind the scenes, when confronted by the guests. But once they're left alone, he, too, leaves Atsumu. 

Isamu, a little drunk on the wine and spirits, rambles on and on about how happy he is that his beloved Atsumu has finally found the person he can spend his life with. And that he couldn't be more happy that it turned out to be Ryuga's son. He rattled off some more, but Atsumu doesn't bother listening to his nonsense. 

“Congrats on the marriage,” Ojiro Aran, an old friend says, clapping him on the back. On one hand, he holds a glass of whiskey. His face is bright and gleaming with pride. “Who would have thought you'd get to tie the knot before me?” Atsumu had always found him handsome — in fact, he had been Atsumu's first crush, his pansexual awakening — and time has proven to be the perfect enhancer for his features, for they are now more prominent and defined, making him even more attractive especially underneath the light of the moon and the yellow of the street lamps. 

“Sorry I couldn't make it to the wedding,” he adds, licking his lips. “Something had come up.”

“Itʼs okay,” Atsumu says brightly. “I'm glad you could make it today at least.” 

Behind Aran, Atsumu spots Kiyoomi talking to someone with olive green hair. Or is it brown? Atsumu can't really tell in the dark. The man's face is mostly expressionless, but Kiyoomi is talking to him with a face Atsumu had never seen him make before, all excited and sparkly and animated.

Atsumu wonders who the man must be, to be able to coax this Kiyoomi outside his shell. 

Someone pulls him aside, dragging him from Aran. It's his father. Atsumu looks back and calls out a hasty “see you around” to Aran, before his father drags him around to introduce him to the guests he personally invited. 

He loses himself in a whirlwind of “Meet the Akagis” and “Komori-san here is Kiyoomi's uncle, have you met?” and “The Ginjamas have been recently acquainted with the Sakusa, thanks to the merger.” Atsumu isn't really paying attention; the names his father rattles off go inside one of his ears and immediately go out the other. 

And all the while, in between polite smiles and shallow niceties, he's thinking, “If my father personally invited some of the guests, does that mean the Kitas are here?” Shinsuke's family is one of the main grain suppliers for the Miya Food Corp., and since they were at the wedding reception, it's not far off that Isamu would think to invite them here… 

Atsumu is unsure how many hours have passed and how many guests he's personally talked to and greeted courtesy of his father, but once he meets the last of them, Isamu heads off to have more drinks, leaving Atsumu on his own. 

Atsumu walks around the lawn, looking for Osamu or Rintarou or Aran — anyone he knows. The tiny, desperate part of him would welcome Kiyoomi too, even though he wouldn't be so warm to the touch. 

There— a familiar figure. He walks over to the man whose back is facing Atsumu. It's only when Atsumu touches his back that he realizes why this man is so familiar. It's Shinsuke. 

It's too late to back out now, because Shinsuke is turning to face him with an expectant look on his face; eyebrows raised, an automated smile on his face, the one he reserves for higher-ups like Isamu. His smile falters when he sees it's Atsumu. 

“Hi,” Atsumu finally says. It's good to finally get to see Shinsuke after so many months of being in his absence, but still having the shape of his face memorized, still feeling the ghosts of his touch where air grazes his skin. 

“Hello.” Shinsuke's voice is quiet. He leaves his empty wine glass on the nearby table, eyes never leaving Atsumu's. His hand starts to reach for Atsumu, but he forces them back to his sides as if Atsumu is broken glass and picking up a shard would cut through more than his flesh and bone. Had they been alone, Atsumu knows Shinsuke would have taken that risk anyway, because a gash is nothing next to a huge rip in his soul. 

“Have you been well?” Atsumu asks lightly. 

Shinsuke releases a breath. “Not quite, to be honest, and it still hurts,” he admits lowly. “But I'm trying to be.” 

They're silent. There was a time when their silence brought comfort, a tranquil escape from the pressures of real life, a time when their closeness transcends speech, and the silence is welcomed. But tonight this quietude is brutal, a sword to the gut. There's an iciness to it that Atsumu can't begin to understand. It's sharper, it seems, than the broken glass that is he. Atsumu dimly wonders if bruises will start to appear on his arms under the magnitude of the quiet as it eats away at him. 

“Maybe it's a good thing that this happened,” Shinsuke suddenly says. 

“What do you mean?” Atsumu says, alarmed. “You know I'll go back to you when all this is over, right?” 

“Think about it,” Shinsuke says instead. “Even if you separate from him when this ends, do you really think your father would have a sudden change of heart and allow you to be with someone like me? You know that's never going to happen, not after your mother.” 

“So we go back to our old ways,” Atsumu says insistently, struggling to keep his voice hushed. “We don’t tell anyone. Like we always do.”

“Don’t you want to get married?” Shinsuke says, looking away. His jaw is set, hardened with emotion, but he isn’t angry. Atsumu knows angry: steely gaze, a voice low and cold yet dense in intensity, of which the magnitude can rival powerful earthquake gods, hands balled into fists at his sides to let loose some of his rage without swinging. And this isn’t it. It’s… sad. Frightened, almost. “We can’t do that if we’re sneaking around.”

“I’ve already done that anyway.” Atsumu laughs humorlessly. “As long as I’m with you, I’ll be okay.”

When Shinsuke looks at Atsumu, his eyes are glassy. Something that reflects the moonlight slides from his cheek, and with a start, Atsumu realizes he’s crying. “What about me?” he says sadly. His voice sounds so broken, so hurt, that Atsmu selfishly wants to cover his ears so he won’t ever hear such sadness again. “Atsumu, I want to get married. I want to have kids. I want to have a family I can talk about to other people. I don’t want to have to hide my love.” He reaches for Atsumu’s hand but stops halfway when he realizes they’re not alone. “I can’t live with that,” he says in a lower voice.

Atsumu stares at him, stricken with grief and robbed of speech. Having to break up with Shinsuke to marry another man only became bearable at the prospect of being able to get back to him, to his love, someday. But even that had been taken from him. He feels so hopeless, so drained of life. What’s the point of all this, then, all the wealth and properties, the ability to bend men, women and other people alike with his riches and power, if he can’t even be with the one he loves? For all the privilege spoonfed to him at birth, he’s never felt so powerless. “Are you—?” he sputters, unable to piece his thoughts well enough to construct a sentence. “You can’t—”

“I’m sorry,” Shinsuke says. “I truly am. And believe me when I say that, if the circumstances were different, if our love weren’t so criminal, I would have chosen you over and over, even if I had to bleed to stay by your side. If only being with you weren’t so outlawed. So uncertain.”

“But it isn’t!” Atsumu says, desperate. “You know full well I’m never going anywhere. I’ll always love you, even if it must be kept hidden from the world.”

Shinsuke shakes his head. “I know that, and I will, too,” he says slowly. “But it’s not the same. It’s not what I want.”

  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  


Atsumu flees back inside the house to hide, because that’s what he’s good at, isn’t it? Shinsuke gave up on him like everyone else because he takes too much comfort in the shadows. And yet he can’t stop himself from doing it. Turning to the shadows, shutting the doors. It’s something imbued within his sinews and bones, a muscle memory he only just realized he had. 

So he runs. Opens the first door he sees, a pathway to privacy where he can weep over his misgivings and failures. It’s the door to the bathroom, and inside is Kiyoomi. And he’s not alone. They’re preoccupied, actually, and it’s something he’s not supposed to witness. Atsumu knows that because he’s seeing Kiyoomi kiss that olive-haired guy from outside with a desirous passion he never knew Kiyoomi was capable of. Hungry and eager. Always longing for more. Touching the other man as much as he can, pulling him as close as their bodies would allow.

There’s a pang in Atsumu’s heart. Not because his husband is kissing someone else, but because Kiyoomi’s longing is so familiar to him. He remembers wanting, just like Kiyoomi right now, to close the nonexistent gap between his skin and Shinsuke’s. He suspects that no matter how close Kiyoomi pulls the man in, he’d still feel like it isn’t enough. Once, when Atsumu was drunk and so, so desperate, he’d thought of carving his stomach open so Shinsuke could climb in, and they could become one. (He then realized that it was a thought far from sane, so he dismissed it.)

He once read that even though humans are skin-to-skin with another, they’re never really touching, on a quantum physical level. Perhaps that’s where the frustration, the restless insatiability of not being close enough stems from.

Plato even said in _The Symposium_ that humans were once born with two heads, four arms, and four legs, but the gods had punished them, splitting them right down in the middle, so they are two halves of one whole. As a result, humans spend most of their lives with a sick longing in their chest, a yearning for someone they do not know. All their lives there is an emptiness in them where their partner should have been, and everyday is a hunt for their other half. This, perhaps, explains the desperation to fuse themselves with the love of their life. 

This, perhaps, explains the invisible fire that pulses through Kiyoomi's veins, engulfing him as he does the other man. 

Slowly, he closes the door before they notice he’s there.

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  


Atsumu knows Osamu is keeping something from him. He knows that as well as he knows how many hours there are in a single day. 

There’s no such thing as supernatural twin telepathy. It’s not as if their souls are connected such that a cut on Osamu’s finger would make Atsumu bleed. But they’ve known each other from the womb and out, known the shape of each other’s thumb before anything else. They know the subtle differences of each other’s smile, how this dip of the eyebrow is different from that. And Osamu has his tells: aversion of eyes, detachment of the mind from the present, long bouts of silence. He may never admit it for as long as he shall live, but he hates having to keep anything from his twin, hates how he has to hide one thing from a mirrored version of himself — alike in as many ways as they are different.

And so, much like how Atsumu knows the extent of Osamu’s blossoming love for culinary arts, Atsumu knows not to push him. Grilling him, pestering him until he caves and speaks of whatever he is keeping within himself is not the way to make Osamu confess. Should the pestering come from Atsumu, Osamu would probably shrivel up and carry his secret to his grave just to spite his brother. 

Osamu would tell him soon enough, on his own accord. Once the desire to confide festers enough that its weight would overturn even the mightiest of ships, Atsumu knows it won’t be long until Osamu lets it all out, spilling his guts and heart out onto the open.

What Atsumu doesn’t expect, though, is for Osamu to tell him a week after he starts to suspect something. 

They’re in their backyard pool, messing around the way teenagers do, because their father is away and there’s no one out here to silently judge them and guilt them into forgetting their plans to spend the whole day relaxing instead of studying. Or “doing more important things,” as their father liked to phrase it. It’s a beautiful day; warm but not the very hot kind that makes you sticky all over with sweat. They play in the water like they have all the time in the world. And maybe they do, because they’re born on a golden cradle and the world is made for them to walk on it. 

Atsumu had just finished trying to drown his brother, when the latter, coughing and trying to catch his breath, suddenly says, “I have a boyfriend.”

Atsumu stops, taken aback. So this is what he’s been hiding. There’s discomfort in the pit of his stomach, and it growls as it starts to grow, menacing and loud in its warpath. He’s clouded with confusion, doesn’t know how to react. He knows, though, that he should be happy for his brother, but the most part of him doesn’t want to acknowledge that. So he settles for a dry laugh, one with no smile. “And that matters to me because?” he attempts a light-hearted jab but it falls lifeless once it escapes his lips. And Osamu knows that it’s a defense mechanism and doesn’t return the poor attempt at humor.

“Come on, Tsumu,” he says. He makes a face, and Atsumu’s heart skips a beat when he realizes it’s one he doesn’t recognize. What else doesn’t he know about his brother? Is there a whole side of him that Atsumu is kept in the dark about? The thought makes him shiver, and he’s very, very scared. “I’ve been keeping this from you because I didn't want you to feel excluded,” Osamu continues. “Which, I admit, is pretty counterproductive, since not telling you things is exclusive in itself.” He coughs. “Remember in elementary school when those guys wanted to be friends with me but not you? Because you were all crass and rude and they found that off-putting? I didnʼt want you to feel like I have something you can't have. Again.”

“I didn't mind, not having friends,” Atsumu says, because it's true. Back then, he hadn't known what it was really like to be left behind. And when their mother left, it had been like a slap to reality, showing him all he has missed for keeping to himself, all he would lose if he doesn't do anything about it. 

“I know, Tsumu, but you are not the same kid you had been, ever since mother left.” 

Atsumu grimaces, but he doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know if there even is anything to say. How does he even respond to that? Osamu doesn’t seem to be deeply troubled about it, so that means an apology isn’t what he wants. What does he want, then? Does he want Atsumu to just sit and watch as other people take his only family away?

Osamu purses his lips, waiting, but Atsumu doesn’t speak. Finally, he gives in, sighing. “Do you not want to say something?” He looks agitated, impatient. And he looks so similar to Atsumu, so much like himself that it unnerves him. 

The words leave his mouth before he could stop to think. “Don’t leave me.”

At that, Osamu’s face softens. What looks like realization flashes in his eyes as he reaches forward to ruffle Atsumu’s dripping wet hair with his hand. “Silly,” he says with a fond smile Atsumu rarely sees. “Why do you think I would?” He scrunches his nose, as if it pained him to say any of this. “I love Rintarou but not even he can take me away from your annoying ass.”

“People always leave me,” Atsumu says. His voice is level, but there is real pain in it. If he were talking to anyone other than Osamu, it would definitely have gone undetected. No one else can read him the way his twin can. No one else can hear the hurt he tries to mask, see the genuineness he tries to hide behind a thick wall of indifference. 

“I won’t,” Osamu promises, because he knows the depths of Atsumu the way he knows his own. “There will be new people in both our lives, but I promise you that we will always be brothers. Nothing can take that away from us, dumbass. Honestly, I’m offended. Do you think so low of me?”

A grin breaks out on Atsumu’s face. “Yeah,” he says, then with one swift movement and without a warning, Osamu pushes his head underneath the water, laughing.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  


**WED ONE, BED ANOTHER: Miya Kaede’s secret affair comes to light!**

By Yamamoto Akane, MSBY News writer — August 22, 2003

Who would have thought that the sweet and kind-hearted Miya Kaede would find love in someone else other than her husband, the rich and famous Miya Isamu himself? Nobody — not even her own family — saw it coming, and Japan is certainly in for a surprise — an ugly one wrapped in pretty packaging and bows.

Yesterday, August 21st, the world buzzed with maddening disbelief when explicit photos of Kaede and a Miya Food Corp. employee by the name of Suzuki Eiji were released on the internet by an anonymous account. Along with the photos are screenshots of private messages exchanged between the two. The timestamps reveal that the affair has been going on for more than a year, and it is unknown if Kaede herself initiated the relationship.

When bombarded with questions about the scandal by different news outlets, Miya Isamu has not spoken a single word, continually refusing to acknowledge the stain on his reputation. That being said, the house of Miya seems to have been closed from the public, as neither eight-year-olds Atsumu nor Osamu were seen in school since the word of their mother’s infidelity came to light.

And to think that there are many women who fantasize about being Isamu’s wife! The world rages on as they ask, “What the hell was Kaede thinking?” One thing’s for sure, though: that’s definitely one irreparable blow to Isamu’s pride and soul! Funny how a small woman can bring such a powerful man to his knees. 

Poor Miyas. How they’ll deal with damage control in the later days will be interesting to see. Post a comment with your thoughts and tell us what you think!

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Kiyoomi still isn’t talking to Atsumu. He comes home every night, though, which Atsumu supposes is an improvement. And every night, they wordlessly alternate between sleeping on the bed in the master’s bedroom and the couch in the living room. In the morning, Atsumu usually rises first to cook breakfast. And in the event that he doesn’t get to wake by six, Kiyoomi leaves the house without eating. Though he’d rather not, Atsumu tries his absolute best to be patient with him, keeping in mind what his brother had told him about Kiyoomi’s misplaced anger.

Perhaps another indication that Kiyoomi is starting to cool down is the gradual disappearance of his silence. 

It starts on the night he came home drunk, two weeks after they’d started living together. Atsumu is in the living room, feet on the coffee table, typing away at the laptop that’s sitting on his upper thighs, working on a presentation for his upcoming meeting with an international business consortium.

Something slams on the front door, making him jump and almost spill his coffee on his computer. He clicks his tongue in annoyance and takes off his anti-radiation glasses before putting his laptop away and standing to see what is up. He opens the door and in stumbles Kiyoomi, intoxicated and flushed.

“What the hell happened to you?” he demands, trying to help him up, but Kiyoomi pushes his hands away.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Kiyoomi grumbles. Even drunk, he’s still angry at Atsumu, it seems. “Hands off.”

Atsumu rolls his eyes and goes back to his place on the couch, watching in amusement as Kiyoomi tries to prop himself up. His hands fail under his weight, though, so he just gives up and lays there on the floor. Atsumu doesn’t move to help him. “If you stay there, you’ll get germs all over your face,” he calls, before turning back to his presentation.

It seems to wake Kiyoomi’s senses because he sits up, slowly, wobbly, and crawls over to the bedroom. 

“It’s my turn to sleep on the bed tonight!” Atsumu shouts at him, but he doesn’t seem to hear nor care.

The next morning, Kiyoomi’s silent treatment breaks every time he grunts or snaps at Atsumu. Perhaps some part of him is grateful that Atsumu had graciously allowed him to take the bed when it was not his turn. He’s still angry and hostile, like a wild, rabid dog, but now he’s actually acknowledging Atsumu’s existence, so Atsumu considers it a good thing.

It goes on for a while with no end in sight; the snapping, the arguing — Atsumu’s almost convinced that this is how they’re going to live for the next few months. And he’s practically resigned to that fate. It doesn’t matter anyway, because in the end they’re destined to separate ways, never mind that Atsumu no longer has a person to return to. A forced bond like this is not meant to last. A profound relationship that stems from mutual disdain only exists in fiction. 

And all the while, every time his father asks him to make rounds and drop by the farms, Atsumu stops going to Shinsuke’s.

  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


There’s a lot you won’t understand when you’re a kid. When your dad suddenly tells you one day that you won’t be going to school, you rejoice and don’t ask questions because, hey, you get to skip class and that’s not something to complain about. When your parents are arguing in their room but your butler tells you that it's just a little disagreement and it’ll be alright soon, you believe him, and you think nothing truly is wrong because the shouting stops after a while. And when your mom enters your room with a suitcase to tell you that she’s going on a vacation, you cry because you don’t want her to leave, but she hugs you and tells you that she promises to come back soon, so you believe her.

When you’re still just a kid, you believe anything. Your whole life is shaped by the grown-ups around you, and you trust them with your life because what choice do you have? And, really, how could you even know better?

When you’re still just a kid, you never let go of the hope that your mother will still come back from her vacation, that she’ll keep her promise and come home to you.

When you’re still just a kid, you don’t know that adults lie.

Atsumu glances at Osamu questioningly, before turning back to look at his father. Isamu is sitting on the balcony, arms slumped on the railings. He holds a bottle of liquor in one hand, gazing at his domain from above. It’s dark out, and the moon is hiding behind the clouds, as if afraid that Isamu might take his grief out on it. Only the dim lights of the lamps below illuminate the place enough so they can see.

“Father?” Osamu says, his voice small. There’s a barely audible quivering in it that tells Atsumu he’s about to cry. “Are you okay?”

Isamu sniffs, but doesn’t answer. He takes a swig from the bottle. His eyes are bloodshot and there are bags underneath them, dark and purple, almost like a bruise. He brings the bottle to his lips again, this time downing it fully. Hands trembling, he tosses it off the balcony, and it shatters on the ground below. The sharp sound makes the twins flinch, and they exchange uneasy looks. There’s a scuffling that follows, which Atsumu guesses are the servants coming to clean the mess.

“Tsumu, what’s wrong with father?” Osamu whispers. His eyes are glassy, and he’s on the verge of tears. He rubs at his eyes, shivering despite the warm evening air. He reaches for Atsumu’s arm in an attempt to steady himself. Atsumu lets his brother hold him.

“Maybe he misses mother,” Atsumu suggests in a low voice, but Isamu still hears him, turning to his children with a glare, a horrible look in his eyes.

“Don’t talk about that bitch,” he spits out, venom on his tongue. His words are acrid, and Atsumu feels his skin prickle — the beginnings of a burn. Isamu grabs another bottle from the crate beside him. Opens it. “Why are you still here?” he asks bitterly. “Leave me alone. Go to your room. It’s late.”

“Father,” Osamu pleads. “We just want to know if you’re okay.”

“Well, you’re looking at me now, aren’t you?” Isamu laughs humorlessly. “And as you can see, I’m not okay in the slightest. Are you happy?”

His hostility is what stings the twins the most. This man before them isn’t the father they knew. Their father is happy and gentle and powerful. He’s bright and warm and looks at them like they’re the best things he’s ever seen. Not this… this pathetic and venomous shadow of a man who lashes out at anyone who comes close. Even his own sons. Especially his own sons, who remind him of a woman he loves.

“We’re not happy if you’re not, father.” Atsumu takes a tentative step forward, pulling Osamu, whose grip on his arm is tight, as if he is holding onto a lifeline, along with him. “Please talk to us.”

“What’s wrong, father?” Osamu asks again, his voice cracking.

Finally, Isamu looks at them, and his face softens. In that moment, gone is the angry, unapproachable man that their father had become. “You two look so much like her,” he says after a while. He closes his eyes, setting the bottle on the floor beside him as he angles his face up. He sighs, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows thickly.

The twins exchange looks again. Slowly, they climb on Isamu’s lap, one son on each thigh. Osamu chews on his lower lip. They’re silent, then, unsure of what to say or do. Then Isamu’s body shakes violently, and they realize he’s crying. 

The great Isamu Miya, born from the dirt, who rose from the shackles of his unprivileged life and built his company and name from the ashes of his burned home, is crying, shoulders heaving as he sucks in lungfuls of air in between sobs. His cries cut through the night like painful sirens, loud and thick with alarm, and every muscle in Atsumu screams along with him, as if hearing his father weep physically pained him. If humans were made of bone china, Isamu would have had spider-web cracks on his skin, and the fractures would race down from his face to his ankles, tracing the rapidly disappearing remnants of Kaede’s touch. And one more sob would have ultimately shattered him.

“Father?” Osamu calls, almost hysterical. They’ve never seen their father cry, and it breaks their heart to see him hurting like this. Without really meaning to, they simultaneously wrap their arms around their father’s midriff. As kids, their arms are short, and their wingspan wouldn’t have been enough to cover the entirety of his torso, but together, one on each side, they ensure that there isn’t an empty space on their father’s waist as they cling to him tightly.

“Your mother’s not coming back,” Isamu finally says after a long while. He pulls away to look at his sons in their eyes. “I’m sorry,” he confesses. “I don’t know where I went wrong, but she’s not coming back.”

“But she promised—” Atsumu starts, but Isamu cuts him off.

“I know,” he says. “I know, son. But she lied. She found another man, and she’s not coming back.” As if in a trance, he says it again, like a mantra he can repeat to himself until he wakes up from this nightmare, voice breaking at the end. He sighs shakily, defeated. “You two are all I have left.” He holds his sons tighter. “Promise not to leave me?” he says weakly. 

Dimly, Atsumu remembers his mom making the same promise to them. He wonders if Kaede ever thought about that oath the moment she made her decision to leave, or if she’d been lying too, back then. He shakes the thoughts out of his head and looks up at his father. “Promise.”

A few years later, Atsumu and Osamu would look back on that day and see that it had been when their father had genuinely considered forbidding them from getting romantically involved with an employee. And they would understand, of course — not only would it look bad for their family in various ways, but it would serve as a painful reminder about their mother’s betrayal as both a spouse and a parent.

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  


It occurs to me to dwell on what a microcosm

we are of the war as a whole, you and I.

The physics of us. An action 

and an equal opposite reaction.

_—_ _Amal el-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, _

_This Is How You Lose The Time War_

  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


Like all things that shrivel up with time, there, too, is a limit to the shelf life of Atsumu’s patience. He can only be understanding for so long. And when his attempts to reach out keep hitting a fiery wall that burns his hand over and over again, one can say it’s a miracle his patience hadn’t worn thin a long time ago.

He meets Kiyoomi’s hostility with his own. The first time Atsumu finally snaps back at Kiyoomi, he pauses, surprised, but it disappears quickly and they spiral into a screaming match — the first in the series that would follow. It’s a battlefield in the Sakusa household everyday: mouths turn to guns with insults as bullets, rapid-fire and seemingly unstoppable. A no man’s land with grounds that not even a saint would step foot on. Some days the war turns cold, and silence becomes both their sword and shield, but all it takes is one misstep, one slip of the mouth, for the fuse to ignite, slowly; a snide remark to be followed by a retort, which leads to a heated explosion, and then the world knows no peace once more.

Along with Atsumu’s refusal to put up with more of Kiyoomi’s bullshit is his refusal to cook him meals. He now only prepares food for himself and doesn’t bother asking him if he’s eaten anymore. They still alternate between sleeping on the bed and the couch — an unspoken, almost sacred rule that neither of them intended to break. 

They both leave for work as usual and arrive home without sparing the other a glance. When the hired help that their fathers finally let them have come by to clean the place on weekends, Atsumu makes sure that he’s never around so Isamu and Ryuga wouldn’t catch wind of whatever is going on between the two of them. Despite their best efforts, he’s sure that it would be hard for them to try and act civil in front of the cleaners.

Atsumu stretches and pulls his anti-radiation glasses from his face, rubbing at his eyes. It’s eight in the evening, and he’s been staring at the computer screen for hours. He’s only just finalized his presentation for tomorrow’s meeting, and he’s tired as _hell._ Sparing one last glance at the monitor, he saves the file, then shuts off his computer. 

A little giddy and excited that he can finally head home to rest, he hums to himself on his way down and to his car. But his light mood quickly turns sour when he’s met with the bumper-to-bumper traffic outside, and all of a sudden, his exhaustion weighs down on his shoulders as if he were holding up the sky. His eyes sting from dryness and overuse, and his legs and feet feel cramped on the pedals. He curses, but there’s not much else he can do, but suffer through it.

Nowhere else to go but through, as they say.

It’s eleven when he finally gets home, and he’s too tired to drag himself to the bathroom, so he collapses on the couch, even though it’s his turn to sleep on the bed. His slumber is cut short, though, when an insistent hand shakes his arms.

“What?” he snaps, opening his eyes. He sees Kiyoomi towering over him, and it takes him by surprise for a second, before his anger gets the best of him. “What the fuck’s wrong with you? Leave me alone.”

“You’re in my place,” Kiyoomi says stubbornly.

Atsumu should have just gotten up and gone back to sleep in the bedroom, but he’s so tired and irritated, and he can’t understand why Kiyoomi couldn’t have just gone to sleep on the bed. “Knock it off. Just take the bed tonight, alright?” he says tiredly. “I want to sleep.”

But Kiyoomi doesn’t budge. “Get out.”

“I can’t deal with your crap today, Kiyoomi,” he says, closing his eyes to try and get back to sleep. “I’ve had a long day.”

“Sleep on the damn bed already,” Kiyoomi says. “Get out of my way.”

At this, flames lick at the back of Atsumu’s eyelids and his vision burns when he opens them. “What the fuck’s your problem?” he demands. “Why do you hate me so much?” He knows why, but it slips out of his mouth anyway because he’s angry and he’s tired, and he can’t take anymore of Kiyoomi’s bullshit. “I just want to fucking sleep, and you won’t even let me do that?”

“I told you to go sleep on the bed,” Kiyoomi says.

Irritated, Atsumu sits up and glares at him. “I told you, I’m fine here. Why the hell are you still bothering me? Don’t you have other things to do than to keep me from sleeping?” And he says it before he can even stop himself: “Like, I don’t know, eat some guy’s face off in the bathroom?”

Kiyoomi’s face flushes red in anger, though, Atsumu supposes, looking at the pink on his ears, that it’s also a mix of embarrassment. He realizes, then, that Atsumu had seen him and whoever that guy was at the party. “Don’t talk to me like that,” he growls.

“Then go the fuck away and let me get my goddamn sleep!” Atsumu thunders.

“I’m doing you a favor, Miya,” Kiyoomi says with an equally murderous glare.

“Oh, really? How is waking me up from my badly needed sleep doing me a favor?” Atsumu retorts.

“Because I know you’re tired, and the bed is more comfortable than the couch, Miya, but if you prefer a cramped seat over a goddamn bed then by all means, be my guest!” Kiyoomi yells and turns his heels so he’s no longer facing Atsumu and marches up to the bedroom where he slams the door shut. 

Atsumu blinks. What just happened? Did Kiyoomi really express his concern for Atsumu’s welfare or had Atsumu been so exhausted that he started hallucinating things? He gags at the thought. If it had been a trick of his mind, of all things, why would he even imagine that? Slowly, he rises, as if in a daze, and walks up the stairs and toward the bedroom door. 

He knocks. “Omi-kun?” He hasn’t called Kiyoomi that nickname in a long time. It feels alien on his tongue, but still startlingly familiar, like an old friend’s name he hasn’t spoken of in a lifetime. He knocks again. There’s shuffling on the other side, but the door remains closed. “Can we talk?” he says. “For real this time? I believe this conversation is long overdue.” There’s silence still on the other end, and for a while Atsumu considers fetching his set of keys to open the door and force his way in to talk when the door swings open. Behind it stands Kiyoomi. “Hey,” Atsumu greets. “Let’s talk in the living room?”

Kiyoomi scrunches his nose. “Only if you take a shower first.”

Atsumu rolls his eyes and stops himself from running his mouth. He had knocked on the door bearing a white flag, after all. He has to control himself. 

When he finishes showering and putting on his night clothes he meets Kiyoomi in the living room, picking at the tiny balls of lint on his robe. Atsumu sits beside him but makes sure to situate himself a good few inches away. “Alright, let’s settle this,” Atsumu says, rubbing his hands together. His desire to sleep had long since been gone now. “I know you hate me because you didn’t want to be married, but do you have to treat me so harshly?”

Kiyoomi sighs and threads his fingers through his hair. “I know, I know,” he says. “I’m well aware that it’s an irrational hatred, and I sometimes feel bad about it, but I just can’t…” He inhales sharply. “...help myself. I’m angry at the situation I’ve been thrust into and I can’t keep myself from lashing out. Every time I see you I get reminded of the things I’ve lost.”

“There you go again with the _I_ thing,” Atsumu says, rolling his eyes. “ It’s always _‘I’ve been forced into this,’ ‘I lost so many things,’_ with you. I hope you understand that I lost someone too, because of this. You’re not the only one with a lover, you know.”

Kiyoomi looks like he’s been hit between his eyes.

“I gave you so many chances to warm up to me,” Atsumu reminds him when he doesn’t speak. “I tried to be patient. I thought you’d come around if I just gave you time.” He pauses, biting his lip. “You do know that I have no control over this—” he gestures wildly “—whole marriage thing, right?”

Kiyoomi turns away. “I know,” he says. “And I’m sorry for how I treated you.”

Atsumu grins. “I know,” he says breezily. “I thought you were heartless at first, but my pretty face really got to you, huh? Made you feel all guilty so you’d be concerned about my wellbeing?”

Kiyoomi snorts. “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he says. “Just because I’m unlearning my instinct to hate you doesn’t mean I like you.”

“Oh, you will,” Atsumu says with a dismissive wave. “Everyone always ends up liking me.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Mom, I can’t sleep.”

Kaede wakes. Rubs her eyes tiredly. She takes in Atsumu: eyes wide and pleading, lower lip jutting out in a pout, hand clutching a blanket that’s trailing behind him. “Do you want to sleep here tonight?” she says kindly. She glances behind her and sees that Isamu is sound asleep.

Atsumu shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Osamu will be lonely. Can you tell us a story in our room?”

Kaede yawns, hiding her mouth behind her hand. “Okay,” she says, getting out of the covers. She follows her son out of the room. He drags his blanket behind him and Kaede resists the urge to pull it up so it wouldn’t gather whatever microscopic particles are present on the floor.

Atsumu leads his mom to his and Osamu’s room. When they open the door, they see Osamu sitting up on his bed. His face breaks into a toothy grin when he sees his mom behind Atsumu. “I can’t sleep,” he says, raising his arms up so Kaede would carry him.

“I heard,” she says, carrying Osamu in her arms. She pulls a chair and sits next to Atsumu’s bed, the younger twin on her lap. “So,” she says. “A story, huh?” Atsumu gets into bed, looking eagerly up at his mom. “Okay, so there’s this story my mom told me about before,” she begins. “It’s about a peasant girl.”

“What’s a peasant?” Osamu asks. 

Kaede hums, brushing Osamu’s hair from his eyes. “Someone who’s not like you,” she says gently, carefully choosing her words. A parent’s statement is a child’s gospel; whatever she says, however she acts around her sons, will shape and influence them for a significant part of their life. “We, your parents, are able to give you two everything you want and need, because we have the money. And some people can’t afford such luxuries.”

Atsumu’s mouth shifts from a thin line to a curious 'o'. “Some people can’t have a giant pool if they ask for it?” he asks, eyebrows furrowing. He scrunches his nose, as if not being able to obtain his desires is a concept incomprehensible to him. Perhaps it is. All his life he’s taught that the earth is made for him to walk upon, that trees will bow to him if he so wishes and the animals will sink to their knees in his presence.

“Yes, dear,” Kaede says lightly, tapping the tip of his nose. “But this girl, even though she doesn’t have every material thing, is still happy. She has loving friends and an even more loving family, and to her, that is enough.” She pauses, as if waiting for the weight of her words to sink in. “Then, one day, a rich man comes to their province and sees the girl playing with her friends.”

“Why was he there?” This time, it’s Osamu who asks. 

Kaede shrugs. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Men can be weird sometimes.” Her statement incites laughter from the twins. “Anyway,” she says, “He goes to the girl and asks, ‘What’s a pretty thing like you doing here in the slums?’” She grimaces.

“She’s not a thing, though,” Atsumu says. “She’s a girl.”

“Yes,” Kaede says, pleased. “Yes, exactly. So the girl tells him that this is where she lives. He asks her if she wants to come home with him, and he promises to give her everything she wants. But the girl refuses, saying that she doesn’t want to leave her family and friends.”

“And?” Osamu prompts, eyes wide and keen. “What happens next?”

“Everyday the man swings by her house and brings her gifts. Cakes, dolls, dresses — anything a girl wants.”

“What about a sword?” Atsumu says excitedly. “A car?”

“Yes, anything she wants,” Kaede says with a nod.

“Onigiri?” Osamu volunteers, blinking up at her.

Kaede laughs. “I’m sure he brought her onigiri.”

“Cool,” he says warmly, eyes sparkling with interest.

“Then,” Kaede continues, the smile fading from her face, “one day, she gives in and asks the man to bring her with him.”

“She left her family?” Atsumu demands, looking scandalized. “Her friends?”

Kaede nods solemnly. “And after that, they never saw her again.”

Osamu makes a face. “That’s awful,” he says. “I thought this was a bedtime story.”

She laughs. “I said the same to my mom, when she told this story to me.” Clearing her throat, she says, “Right, well let this be a lesson, then, to never leave your loved ones behind for greed.”

“What’s the girl’s name, mom?” Osamu asks.

She ponders on the question for a moment, then decides on, “Kate.”

“That sounds like your name!” Atsumu notes. “Are you the girl from the story?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I would never leave my loved ones behind. Especially not you two.”

“You promise?” they say.

“I promise,” she says.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  


There is a power that comes with begrudging understanding. What could have been a war between worlds is reduced to relative peace. The swords are sheathed, guns tucked away. The jabs are still there, but this time they’re blunt-tipped and lack malice. Atsumu cooks for Kiyoomi again, and though their daily interactions rarely extend past polite greetings, they no longer hide behind thick walls of cemented silence. 

A flimsy, but far from temporary truce. It’s inevitable that their fangs will clash in the near future, but now that the main conflict has been settled and neatly put away, there is little reason for them to lash out at each other. 

Atsumu is sitting on the opposite end, by the kitchen island. “Good morning,” he says when Kiyoomi walks into the dining room. He nudges the plate of breakfast he prepared. “That’s for you. You’re going to have to make your own coffee, though.”

Kiyoomi nods, taking the dish and placing it on the dining table, lips pressed together in a thin smile. This is the maximum extent of his greeting. Atsumu rolls his eyes as Kiyoomi takes a seat and starts to eat.

It’s been nearly two months since they were married, and it’s well into the month of August now. Ryuga is slowly preparing for his campaign in September, eager to stay ahead of his competitors.

“Do you want your father to win?” Atsumu asks lightly, stirring his coffee. “Or are you spiteful enough to pray for his downfall?”

Kiyoomi blinks. “I would prefer he secures his seat on the council, of course,” he says. “Or else all of this would have been for nothing.”

Atsumu nods, shrugging. “That’s true,” he says. They fall into quietude, consuming their breakfast without much chatter, and Atsumu wonders if his father will also be actively lending a hand to Ryuga’s crusade.

As for him, though, that would mean shouldering more work, should his father join Ryuga. Harvest season occurs late into the year, and he already has a mountain of things to oversee in regards to that. His heart aches then, a sudden pang in his chest, heavy and burning, like he’d gotten the blood cells sucked out of his veins and his heart has no idea what to do, nothing to circulate. Atsumu stands from his seat, fingers curled around the handle of his mug of piping hot coffee, and walks over to one of the large windows on the left wing of their living room. He pushes the curtains to the side so he can look at the downpour outside. 

Rice farmers begin their harvest around mid-September, and Atsumu always visits Shinsuke around that time without fail. He likes watching his boyfriend at work. He always looks so at home, so comfortable, as he revels in the pure bliss of being able to take part in the glorious cycle of botanical life. 

Atsumu stares at the image of him on his phone: strands of silvery-white and black hair clinging to the sides of his face in the heat, features in mid-laugh as he leans down to pull his harvest free from the earth. It’s a marvelous sight, breathtaking, almost holy, like watching the first rays of the sun rise on a quiet morning. 

How does his phone have the ability to capture a sacred thing such as this? A precious moment he can never truly revisit, only stare at in this small pocket of frozen time. The throb in his chest begins to metastasize at the sight of his past lover, marching on a mission to raze every fibre of his body with longing ache. 

He puts his phone away, but the pain does not ebb. So he drinks the last of his coffee and relishes the burn of the hot liquid down his throat. Perhaps one day, this perpetual agony will break free of its hold on his chest and subside, falling back into nothingness as he steps out of the ashes of a lost love and into a new world, one where a version of him resides happily in his own skin and does not recognize Shinsuke as a lifeline to rely on.

Perhaps.

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


To an outsider’s point of view, there is virtually no way of telling the twins apart, save for the way they part their hair and the depth of their voice. They could switch hairstyles, change the way they speak and claim to be the other twin, and you’ll be none the wiser. Their mannerisms are not so far apart, too. They both have the tendency to pout and cross their arms when they’re upset. There is no delay in their enthusiasm when they both see something that sparks their interest. And they’re both competitive — they’re each other’s greatest rival.

But there are also things that set them apart. Like how Osamu is more passionate in culinary arts than Atsumu, who is more of a businessman than a chef. Where everywhere else is their battleground, the kitchen is where Atsumu steps aside to make room on the floor for his brother. It’s not as if Atsumu can’t cook — God forbid he be a Miya who doesn’t know his way in the kitchen — but his brother simply holds more love for the knife than he does, and he can respect that. 

And in elementary school there is one very bold distinction that created a great divide between them: Atsumu is not a people person, whereas Osamu can flock with the crowd with little difficulty.

Osamu tries to bring him along as much as he can, not wanting his twin brother to feel left out, but it’s clear that Atsumu isn’t wanted. Not that it matters to him; he doesn’t really care for other people outside his family. He doesn’t mind if he sometimes sits alone at lunch while their classmates crowd around Osamu’s table, talking and joking about things Atsumu doesn’t quite get.

“Why do you make it so easy for people to hate you?” Osamu says one day as they are getting ready for school. “I mean, you do know they hate you, right?”

“Yeah.” Atsumu shrugs. “So what?”

Osamu blinks at him. Atsumu is a walking enigma, filled to the brim with eccentricities, some of which his twin shares, and sometimes even Osamu doesn’t understand his own literal carbon copy of a sibling. And this is one of those times. “You can live like that?” Osamu asks incredulously. “You’re okay with being alone? As in you don’t need friends or anything?”

Atsumu’s head tilts to the side, questioning. “Isn’t family enough?” he says. “At least I know you guys won’t leave me; we’re bound in blood.”

It’s unlikely that his lack of friends doesn’t bother him the slightest. There’s no longing in his eyes when he sees Osamu hanging out with other kids their age without him. He doesn’t get all territorial when Osamu has to put off hanging out with him so he can go and mingle with his friends. But Osamu just can’t wrap his mind around being so at peace about loneliness, so he still tries to bring his brother along with him, despite his friends’ protests. To his young mind, there is something innately wrong about having things his brother doesn’t, being friends with people who can’t stand to have his brother around. Of course there are stuff that he keeps to himself, but friendship is an entirely different matter.

Sometimes he stares at his brother in worry, wondering how he can make his friends like him when he’s so difficult around others. There are times, even, that his pent up frustration makes him lose his temper, thus he ends up insulting Atsumu, demanding why he has to be so weird and burdensome.

“You heard about Riseki-san earlier at school today, right?” Osamu says as they’re about to sleep, yawning without covering his mouth. “You should get up early, tomorrow, okay? He said he rented the amusement park for the whole day.”

Atsumu is confused. He pauses for a few moments, trying to figure out what’s with tomorrow, but nothing comes to mind. “For what?” he asks, but Osamu is already asleep.

When morning comes, Atsumu is awoken by Osamu, who is shaking him insistently. “Why aren’t you up yet?” he demands. “Get moving already; I want to try every ride in the park at least once! And it’s a very big place!”

“Where are we going?” Atsumu asks tiredly, tone vacant of any sense of urgency.

“Didn’t I tell you last night? It’s Riseki-san’s birthday. I told you to get up early,” Osamu says impatiently. He’s tapping his foot on the floor with restless eagerness, lips curled in a way that brought out his dimple.

Atsumu rubs his eyes. “Was I invited?”

Osamu pauses. He licks his lips, wondering for a moment if he should lie, but he decides against it because even though his brother can be slow, he’s not easy to fool when it matters. “Well, no, but—” he starts to say, knowing full well that isn’t going to help his case, cringing when Atsumu interrupts him.

“Then I’m not going, Samu,” he says, already plopping back onto his bed, feeling the claws of slumber taking hold of him once more. 

“But—” he attempts again, but he’s out of arguments.

“Just go,” Atsumu says with full certainty. Not a hint of jealousy or sadness in his voice. (How is that even possible? Osamu thinks, bewildered.) “Have fun.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


If you asked Atsumu what he thought of Kiyoomi when they first met, he’d say he’s impressionable, but depressingly enigmatic, in a way that would make one either steer clear of him, if given the choice, or gravitate toward the appeal of his brooding persona. Whichever of the two is more preferable. Formal, closed off, and serious about his profession. The type who wouldn’t do things just for the hell of it.

If you asked Atsumu what he thought of Kiyoomi after they came to a begrudging understanding and set aside the irrational disdain they had for each other, he’d say he’s not that bad a person at all. A hard-jawed oddball with little flecks of compassion that sometimes leak out of his apathetic exterior like running tap water. He had the best facial reactions for everything, too. (Atsumu discovered this exciting fact when Kiyoomi’s face dissolved into a hilarious pool of devastated disgust after finding a cockroach in the kitchen.)

If you asked Atsumu, after two months of living under the same roof as the guy, he’d say Kiyoomi’s almost likeable, that is if you took, perhaps, his irritating qualities away. And if he just zipped his goddamn mouth instead of taking every given opening to get a jab in. 

But he would never guess that his husband had a tendency to turn to alcohol in troubled times. Sure, Atsumu caught him stumbling home drunk a couple of times, but he’d chalked it up to the occasional stress relief recreational activities or work-related get-togethers. He never actually thought that Kiyoomi is actually going through something and is relying on liquor to ease his ache.

It’s evident now, as Atsumu stares at the marvelous sight before him: Kiyoomi snoring on the couch and clutching a bottle of whiskey to his chest, cheeks red and tear-stained, one unopened and two empty bottles on the floor next to his feet. 

“Jesus,” Atsumu mutters under his breath, hitting Kiyoomi’s cheek lightly with his palm. “Hey,” he says gently, twisting Kiyoomi’s upper body so he’s sitting face up. Atsumu doesn’t stifle the amused huff that escapes his mouth. “Get up.”

“Ushiwaka-kun?” Kiyoomi murmurs, making Atsumu pause, head tilting to the side in curiosity.

“No, silly, it’s me, Atsumu,” he says, shaking Kiyoomi’s arm. “Get up, already. Do you want to sleep without at least taking a shower?”

“Ushiwaka-kun,” Kiyoomi calls, more urgently this time. Eyes still closed, he reaches a hand to grab Atsumu’s arm, pulling him on the couch beside him. “I missed you,” he says, breath smelling of alcohol and twenty-four years of hurt. He presses his cheek to Atsumu’s bicep.

Grimacing, he pushes Kiyoomi as gently as he can. “I don’t know who that is,” he says flatly, though he suspects it’s the man he saw with Kiyoomi back at the party. “And you better stop talking before you say anything you wouldn’t want me to hear.” Shaking his head and clicking his tongue, he stands and heads to the kitchen. He takes a small basin, filling it with water and procures an unused towel from his room. When he heads back to the living room, Kiyoomi is already sitting upright, blinking, but it’s clear that his sobriety still hasn’t returned. Atsumu doubted he’d be completely clear-headed any time soon. 

“Look who’s up.” Atsumu kneels in front of him, lips pursed in disapproval. He dips the towel in the basin of water, squeezing it so it becomes only slightly damp instead of dripping wet. 

Kiyoomi blinks at him, face contorted in confusion. “You’re not Ushiwaka-kun,” he says, almost in disappointment. His voice is slurred and low, like he’s trying to tiptoe his way around a state-of-the-art security system, but his limbs are too clumsy and awkward to make his exhibition go well.

“No,” Atsumu agrees slowly as if Kiyoomi’s inebriated brain would understand him if he just spoke slower, “I’m not.” He starts to dab at Kiyoomi’s forehead with the towel, but Kiyoomi pushes his hand away.

“I’ll go take a shower,” Kiyoomi says, words melting into one indistinguishable mess of sounds, and Atsumu has to strain his ears to understand him. He makes the move to stand, but falls back on the couch immediately. Atsumu can practically _feel_ the way his head must be spinning right now. 

“Standing is out of the question then,” Atsumu says with a smirk. Much less showering by yourself.” He crinkles his nose. “What’s up with you?” he asks, putting the towel back in the basin, which he pushes away from him so he can sit on the floor properly, back against the coffee table. “Did something happen?”

“I miss him,” he says, and a tear rolls down his cheek. It’s strange to see him like this, so broken and easy to push around like a rag doll. A skinless creature whose secrets will spill out in all its nakedness if you stroke it the right way. This drunk Kiyoomi is so unlike his usual self that Atsumu almost mistook him for a different person entirely, bare and unkempt in his inebriation. It’s like taking a well-kept pillow apart for the first time and seeing the mess of feathers inside. 

Atsumu sighs, reaching for the unopened bottle of whiskey and taking a swig for himself. “I miss him too,” he says in the same resigned kind of sadness he’s been feeling for the past few months. And there it goes again: that prickling in his heart that spikes when his thoughts drift too far under the waves of an old romance. He tries to drown it with another gulp of whiskey, but it does little to ease the stinging pain. “My ex, I mean. Not yours.”

Kiyoomi snorts, his entire body shifting as he does so. He extends his arm to take the bottle from Atsumu, who slaps his hand away. He pouts, but doesn’t attempt to take it again, leaning back on the couch. “He’s not my ex,” he says sloppily, chest heaving. He sways, leaning to his side before slumping on the couch. “We were never in a relationship, not really.”

Atsumu raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t look like that,” he says, referring to the scene he bore witness to all those months ago. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Kiyoomi shrugs, closing his eyes. He flails a finger around. “It’s easy to get fooled,” he says drunkenly, words slurring as his consciousness starts to pull away from his intoxicated body. “I did, too. Worst fucking mistake I’ve ever made.”

“You say that like it’s a choice to fall in love with someone,” Atsumu says, but he’s met with no answer, because Kiyoomi is already asleep again. In the absence of Kiyoomi’s drunken spiels springs forth a sudden rush of memories. A laugh. An endless field. An empty beach. A love underneath a universe of stars. 

A new tide of pain washes over Atsumu as he downs torrent after torrent of whiskey, and he desperately wishes he could see Shinsuke again, or at least hear his thoughts. _Does he think of me?_ he wonders, boring holes in the ceiling with his eyes from his horizontal position on the floor. _Does he miss me like I miss him?_

There’s a time when Atsumu would not have doubted that, when he never would have considered the presence of a strain on their relationship. But ever since their last exchange, when Shinsuke told him that they’re better off like this, separate in both physical and emotional respects, he began wondering if Shinsuke had harbored those sentiments for a while, burying them as best he could because he’d rather die than have to face the truth of their tragedy. Atsumu wonders if the distance between them in the early stages of their breakup had made him realize that the relationship wasn’t worth it, after all, if there is no definite end to the secrecy.

He tilts his head to the side, and his eyes meet the front of Kiyoomi’s closed eyelids, whose head is hovering above him. He traces Kiyoomi’s face with his eyes. For all their childish fights and blind contempt, it’s funny how they turned out to be sharing the same pain. Perhaps it’s only fitting that they were wed.

A couple of hours have passed when Atsumu finally stands, emptying the bottle of the last drops of alcohol, steadying himself when the abrupt movement makes him dizzy. He debates for a few moments if he should clean the area, the most part of him raring to go and have a warm bath, but he ultimately decides on clearing the mess first before he pampers himself, knowing how pissy Kiyoomi would get if he wakes to an unclean scene, even though it’s his fault. He begins to tidy the living room, putting away the bottles in stiff and robotic movements.

His foot grazes the bottom of the basin he’d discarded earlier as he passes the living room to get to the bathroom. He looks at Kiyoomi, whose curls had lost their propriety and decided to cover his eyes in wild curtains of strands. Pressing his lips together, he brings the basin of water with him and sits cross-legged on the floor in front of Kiyoomi. He pushes Kiyoomi’s hair from his forehead, mopping his skin with the towel. 

Atsumu jumps when Kiyoomi’s eyes flutter open in one swift motion. He looks at the towel in Atsumu’s hand, but doesn’t protest, so Atsumu takes this as a go signal. “So who’s this infamous Ushiwaka-kun you were raving about?” he asks casually as he continues to dab at Kiyoomi’s face.

Kiyoomi’s facial muscles tense — too quick to be anything other than instinct — but he relaxes after a few moments of thought. “My father’s secretary,” he says quietly.

Atsumu’s eyebrow shoots up. “So you go for the older ones, huh?”

Kiyoomi glares at him. “He’s only a year older than me.”

Atsumu whistles. “So young,” he says lightly, “for a CEO’s right-hand man. I’d have thought Ryuga prefers his attendants older and more experienced.”

“The Ushijima family has been in service to us before I was even born,” Kiyoomi says. “And Wakatoshi is a capable man, so my father naturally trusts him.”

Atsumu’s working on Kiyoomi’s hands now, carefully wiping each finger so Kiyoomi had no room to complain. Not that he seemed to notice; he’s too deep in his thoughts to properly see Atsumu. “So what’s your story?” he asks. “The highs and the lows and all that.”

Kiyoomi bites his lip hesitantly. “He knew I liked him,” he says. “But father forbids it, so he tells me to forget about it.” He exhales deeply. “I think he was just using that as an excuse to reject me without hurting my feelings.”

“Another forbidden romance, huh?” Atsumu comments. “And you once said we weren’t the same, but honestly, now I’m starting to think we’re actually the same person.”

Kiyoomi ignores him. “It’s not that he wants to keep work and personal life separate,” he continues. “I’ve known Ushiwaka-kun since I started associating names with faces, and his is the one face I’d never forget, so we’re way past that. It’s just that my father thinks it’d be uncomfortable for him if he knew his son and secretary were intimately involved. And if we fought or broke up it wouldn’t be any good for any of us.”

Atsumu remains quiet.

“But we got drunk one day, and one thing led to another,” he muses, voice now devoid of any emotion. “Friends with benefits — is that what it’s called? We’d fuck sometimes and my father is none the wiser, but that’s it. I was okay with it, even though I knew he didn’t really like me the way I did him. He’s this man I’ve always fantasized about, so of course I’d take anything I could get. And… I don’t know. At some point I started thinking he’d change his mind about keeping it strictly sexual. And I started to hope.” He laughs bitterly. “Fucking dumbass.” He swallows thickly. “My father found out about it. Saw my text on his phone. Sometimes I wonder if he left his phone in father’s office on purpose so father would put an end to it himself. Maybe he got sick of me and didn’t know how to push me away without jeopardizing his job. As if I would be petty enough to get him fired for not liking me.”

Atsumu bites his tongue to hold back a mean retort.

“Anyway, father read things the wrong way and thought it was a mutual thing instead of just me begging for a second of Ushiwaka-kun’s attention like a desperate fool. And he told me that if I agreed to marry you he’d allow our relationship.” He sits up just as Atsumu finishes with his other hand. “Of course, me being a fucking idiot, I agreed to his terms, thinking that Ushiwaka-kun would like me back, now that we’ve got father’s approval.”

“I’m guessing things didn't go that way.”

Kiyoomi shakes his head. “What you saw back then,” he says. “He’d told me that he just didn’t fucking like me, so I shouldn’t hope for a relationship with him when all this ends. And I should back the fuck off. Of course he didn’t say it that way; he’s too nice for that, goddammit, even if people think he’s an insensitive prick.” He sighs tiredly. “I think you can guess where I’m going with this; I asked him for one last kiss, so I can sear the taste of him in my mind, even if he’s no longer within my reach.”

No wonder he’d seemed so hungry then. Desperate and insatiable. He and Kiyoomi truly aren’t that different, it turns out.

“So you weren’t the only one going through a breakup that night, then,” Atsumu says.

Kiyoomi snorts. “If you could even call it a breakup,” he says. Then the implication of Atsumu’s words sinks in, and he turns to look at him. “Your boyfriend ended things with you too?”

“Well, we were already broken up when father announced our engagement,” Atsumu says. “But at the party he told me that maybe it was a good thing we had to separate. Because with me, he can’t get married. Start a family. Because with me, all that he gets are secrecy and half-truths.”

They’re silent until Kiyoomi speaks. “I never thought I’d say this,” he says slowly, “but I guess you and I are more alike than I thought.”

Atsumu sneers. “Oh, so _now_ you admit it?” he says half-exasperated and half-entertained. “That’s what I’ve been saying!”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes, but his features suggest amusement instead of hate. “And you had to open your goddamn mouth and ruin it.”

  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


All these years trying to find a way to kill himself,

and here’s someone who might actually finish the job.

And somehow, paradoxically, this is the most 

he’s ever wanted to be alive.

_—R.F. Kuang, The Drowning Faith_

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Atsumu should have been used to seeing two copies of the same person by now. He’d never known a time where his life didn’t have anything to do with being a set. He entered the world with a brother attached to his hip, spent most of his childhood wearing clothes that matched his brother’s. So it shouldn’t have been such a big deal for him to see Kiyoomi with his similar-looking siblings, who, funny enough, aren’t even triplets.

But it’s so… odd.

The Sakusa siblings have the same quiet, unearthly beauty, enthralling and dangerous, all sharp cheekbones and flawless skin, accented by the dark curls that hang at the sides of their face. Their similarities are so uncanny, anyone who didn’t know any better would have mistaken them as triplets, told apart only by the different areas on which their beauty marks rested. 

And to Atsumu, it’s so fucking strange to see Kiyoomi’s face on a woman much taller than him, who carried herself like she’s meant to rule the world; on a man much older than him, whose smiles looked like they can force the darkness itself down to its knees.

“Can you quit with the staring?” Kiyoomi muttered to him. “You don’t see me gaping at your brother like a fish for having your ugly mug, do I?”

“You’re sure you’re not triplets?” Atsumu whispers back. 

“My brother is pushing forty. My sister is six years older than me,” Kiyoomi enumerates. “You do the math.”

“But you look so alike—!” Atsumu tries to say, but Kiyoomi shuts him up by stabbing a slice of steak with his fork and shoving it into Atsumu’s mouth. “Ow,” Atsumu complains through a mouthful of food. “If you wanted an excuse to feed me, you could have done it gently. Or is that a kink of yours? You like it rough?”

From the head of the table, Isamu clears his throat. “Seems like these two are getting along nicely,” he jokes. “Ryuga, I didn’t know your son was such a romantic, feeding my son like they’re on a date.”

Atsumu manages to stop himself from making a face on time. Instead, he takes the opportunity to tease Kiyoomi. Lacing an arm around his waist, Atsumu winks. “Of course,” he croons, “my dear Omi-omi here is actually a really huge softy.” He turns to Kiyoomi’s siblings. “It makes me wonder if his siblings are secretly the same too, under all that intimidating exterior.”

To his surprise, Akari and Reo both laugh. “You’d have to ask my wife to know that,” Reo says. “Only she knows how romantic I can get.”

“Oh, I think I know enough,” Atsumu says swiftly, pointedly ignoring Kiyoomi’s glare as he untangles himself from Kiyoomi’s body.

“I want to hear from Kiyoomi,” Isamu says, shifting his gaze to the man beside Atsumu. “How are things at home? My son is treating you well, yes?”

Kiyoomi nods. “To tell the truth, we had a bit of a falling out a while back,” he says, carefully considering his words. “But we’re alright now; Atsumu was very patient with me, even though I was being difficult. Your son is a good man, I have to say; there’s no doubt about it.”

Atsumu feels his brother’s eyes on him, and he couldn’t help but look back. Osamu raises an incredulous eyebrow, silently asking him what Kiyoomi’s change of heart had been about, but Atsumu only shrugs in response. Some part of him is touched after hearing the way Kiyoomi spoke so genuinely, but he knows Kiyoomi only said those things to appease his father.

Ryuga’s voice booms from the other end of the table. “Did I not tell you you’d end up liking him, son?,” he says smugly. “Bet you’re glad you broke up with Wakatoshi now, eh?”

Atsumu feels Kiyoomi stiffen beside him. Without thinking, Atsumu puts a hand on his thigh, making Kiyoomi look at him, but he doesn’t look back. Instead, he quickly says to Ryuga, “So the elections are coming up soon, correct? Any plans for the campaign?”

Ryuga takes the bait. “Oh yes, preparations are coming along nicely,” he says, easing the conversation away from the awkward topic, and continues to ramble on about his platforms, but Atsumu only half listens, nodding politely and making a show of caring. He doesn’t realize that his hand is still on Kiyoomi’s thigh until Kiyoomi pushes it away not unkindly.

“Oh, sorry,” he says under his breath.

“It’s fine,” Kiyoomi answers stiffly without looking at him. Somewhere in the middle of his father’s speech, he stands and excuses himself from the table quietly. None of the others bat an eye, enraptured, for a reason Atsumu can’t comprehend, in Ryuga’s passionate talk about politics. Atsumu, though, stands and follows after him outside.

“Still bothers you?” Atsumu asks, stepping next to him.

Kiyoomi side-eyes him, leaning against the railing. “Yeah,” he says. “Why are you here?”

Atsumu doesn’t know, really. He rubs the back of his neck. “Because we’re friends?” he supplies, but grimaces when it sounded horrible even to his own ears. “I mean,” he tries again, thinking of what to say, “I guess I just have better things to do than listen to your father talk.”

Kiyoomi raises an eyebrow. “Which is?”

“You know, last I checked, you don’t ask this many questions.”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes, but doesn’t bother to reply. 

“He was a jerk,” Atsumu tries again. “Don’t let him invalidate your emotions.”

“I know,” Kiyoomi says quietly. “It’s just hard to feign indifference when it’s coming from him. He’s not really the type to take emotional matters seriously.” He glances at Atsumu, as if checking to see if he’s still listening. “I’m kind of used to his insensitive jokes, but sometimes it catches me off guard when he says them so loosely in front of other people. Like it doesn’t pain me.”

Atsumu nods once, eyebrows curled. “You don’t have to explain,” he tells him, smiling sympathetically. “It’s not your job to maintain a straight face when you’re hurting.”

“I know that too,” Kiyoomi says with a sigh. “And yet people like us do it anyway.”

Atsumu studies him, lips pressed together in an almost agitated manner. “Are you going to be alright?” he finally says after a long while. “Or would you rather we go home?”

Kiyoomi looks at him. “You don’t have to leave,” he says. “You don’t have to come with me.”

Atsumu snorts. “Are you kidding?” he says. “Honestly, Omi, I’m offended. You really think I’d choose sitting through this dinner with our nosey parents getting all up our business over lazing around at home?”

Kiyoomi laughs. “Alright,” he says, an unmistakable twinkle in his eye. He jokingly offers a hand to Atsumu, bowing like a prince from the olden days asking his lover for a dance. “Let’s go home.”

Something tickles at Atsumu — not unlike the crackle of the birth of a flame, or the gentle touch of a feather on skin — when he realizes that he does, indeed, consider their house his home. A safe place he now learned to take comfort in; familiar in the way a turtle knows every inch of the shell it’s been carrying its whole life, warm in the way his hand fits perfectly in Kiyoomi’s.  
  


  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


“Kiyoomi-san, please come to reason,” Wakatoshi’s voice says from the other end of the line. “You know I don’t—” He clears his throat. “You know I don’t share similar sentiments as you. At least not in terms of intensity. And I know you’re aware that this will most likely be a disaster, if we don’t end it now. It’ll be worse for you, particularly.”

“Please don’t say that,” Kiyoomi says against his better judgement, wincing when the sound of his voice bounces on the bathroom tiles. He feels like throwing up, and his voice is suddenly too loud, yet too weak at the same time, for his ears. 

“I’m sorry if I’m ruining your post-marriage getaway for you, but it must be said. I fear that letting it fester would bring nothing but harm.” He pauses, and Kiyoomi can tell that he’s debating whether to tell Kiyoomi more or not. Before he decides against it, Wakatoshi adds, “In truth, I’ve been thinking about telling you this for a while. And it’s only now that something finally pushed me to the edge and gave me the shove I needed to tell you.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t even want to know about this “shove.” He opens his mouth to speak, but he hears Atsumu call his name from outside.

“Omi-kun?” he says. 

Kiyoomi coughs. He lowers his voice, putting a hand over his mouth. “Can we talk about this when I get back?” he hisses. Not waiting for an answer, he ends the call and swings the bathroom door open. The first thing he sees is a dripping wet Atsumu in his swimming trunks, feet planted firmly on the mat by the front door. “What is it?”

“Let’s eat,” he says. He doesn’t seem to have heard anything from Kiyoomi’s conversation, so Kiyoomi decides to spare him the hostility, giving him a long look.

“Okay,” he tells Atsumu with a nod. “Go get yourself dry.” He jerks his thumb at the bathroom behind him and steps aside to make way for Atsumu. He sits on the single-seater, cheek resting on his propped up fist, staring straight ahead but not really seeing, other hand clasped around his phone in a tight grip.

Had he been so blind in his desperation to be seen by Wakatoshi that he hadn’t noticed the signs? He thinks back to the recent occurrences of their copulation. More than a few times Wakatoshi’s first instinct was to recoil from Kiyoomi’s touch, but Kiyoomi had brushed it off as, perhaps, Wakatoshi’s preference to ease into it first instead of jumping right into action. 

Now that he’s thinking about it, he realizes a crucial point he hadn’t recognized before: it’s not that he’d been ignorant about Wakatoshi’s growing distaste for their sexual relationship (albeit still indulging in it); he’d just chosen to ignore it despite himself because he didn’t want to face the reality of their situation.

“Omi-kun, are you planning on getting a move on anytime this century?” Atsumu’s voice brings Kiyoomi back from his glum reverie.

He blinks, pocketing his phone as if in a daze and stands. “Right,” he says, clearing his throat. “Sorry.” 

In an attempt to forget about his problems, Kiyoomi tries to be more interactive, participating in the conversation with Atsumu at dinner as best he could. A couple times he even tried to prolong the talk himself instead of letting it die, which he can tell Atsumu is grateful for.

“Don’t you want to swim?” Atsumu asks him as he tears at a lobster with his teeth, at which Kiyoomi regards with a displeased stare. “The water’s really cool, but it’s especially cold at night.”

Kiyoomi shrugs. “Sure,” he says. He picks his glass up with the tips of his fingers and downs the last drops of his pineapple juice. “Isn’t Maldives famous for its bioluminescent plankton? I heard a lot about it when I read the reviews for this place.”

Atsumu nods eagerly. “Have you seen it for yourself?” he gushes, reminding Kiyoomi strangely of himself when he was a child, easily amazed by mundane things that seem magical to his eyes. “It’s beautiful, Omi-kun! It’s a whole universe in the water. When the waves are strong enough, large numbers of the stuff get washed on the shore, and they glow beneath your feet like you’re walking on stars.”

When Kiyoomi was a kid, he was the most beloved of his siblings, being the youngest. And even his brother and sister spoiled him with love and gifts. His parents told him that he can be anything he wants to be, so he dreamed of being an astronaut, traversing galaxies and leaving his footprints on the moon. But when he grew older, his siblings found their own interests and families, so there was no one else left to take the responsibility of shouldering their family business and taking the mantle when his father passes it down except himself.

And he quickly learns that the freedom he’d been promised wasn’t real at all. There was no world where Kiyoomi could exercise his control over his own life and take off into outer space the way the child in him had always dreamed of.

Of course, even if he’d long since accepted his fate, that doesn’t mean he’d let go of the desire to explore the depths of the universe in a space suit with a primary life support system strapped to his back, a communications carrier assembly wrapped around his head underneath the helmet. And while the latter half won’t be realized any time soon, to hear Atsumu say that they’ll be walking on the stars sparks something in him that’s almost like joy, but not quite.

He nods. Under the table, his toes wiggle in excitement. “I’ve never been here before,” he admits, “so I’ve yet to see it in person.”

What would it be like to finally have at least a part of his childhood dream come true, in a way? he wonders. It’s not exactly the same thing, but with so many things in his life that he, ironically, can’t claim to be his, he finds that he does not care.

Atsumu finishes the last of his food and wipes his mouth. “You should get changed into your swimming trunks now,” he tells Kiyoomi after he gulps a mouthful of water. “I’ll be waiting here for you.”

Eager to finally get going, Kiyoomi doesn’t question him even when he hands Kiyoomi his button-down to leave in their suite. He quickly scurries inside the room and hastily pulls on his shorts after taking off his pants. He glances at his phone that’s lying face-up on his bed, biting his lip.

With an exhale, he shakes his head. No, he won’t let this ruin tonight. For once, he resolves to focus only on the now and keep thoughts of his deteriorating relationship with Wakatoshi at bay.

Tonight, he will let himself breathe. Even for just a little while. Even if it’s with Atsumu.

He hurries back to their table where Atsumu sits waiting for him. He clears his throat. “Let’s go?” he says.

“They usually occur around mid-summer to winter,” Atsumu tells him as they walk side-by-side on the beach. “If we’re lucky, we’ll see the plankton tonight.”

“You mean we there’s a chance we might not?” Kiyoomi asks, disheartened.

Atsumu shrugs, not seeming to have noticed Kiyoomi’s otherwise obvious deflation. “Yeah,” he says off-handedly, “but I’m fairly confident we’ll see ‘em tonight anyway. Call it intuition.” He winks.

Kiyoomi wrinkles his nose.

“We can see them clearly where there’s less torchlight, so we should go farther from the people,” continues Atsumu as he walks ahead, beckoning Kiyoomi to follow him. “Come.” Atsumu leads him to a more secluded part of the island, where dense jungle foliage owns the majority of the island, sparing only a thin line of the coast where the land meets the beginnings of the sea. Signs of humanity are sparse here, save for them, and the only sound Kiyoomi hears are those of the surf hitting rocks and the shore, and the animals and insects drifting about. Nestled under the shade of slender plant stalks, between long blades of green grass darkened in the wake of a sunless sky, swinging from one tree branch to another. Taking refuge underneath the bright petals of glory lilies, on the tender leaves of averrhoa bilimbi.

And there, in the darkness of the dim moonlit sky, the sea comes to life before Kiyoomi’s eyes.

  
  
  
  
  


With the end of their trip also comes the steady increase of Kiyoomi’s agitation levels. Without meaning to, he snaps at Atsumu whenever the other man tries to talk to him. He knows it’s rude, and too much, even for him, but it’s taking all of him not to spontaneously combust, and having to talk to anyone is definitely not helping him.

Atsumu slams his glass on the table, irritated. “So what do you want to do?” he barks impatiently.

Kiyoomi wipes his mouth with a napkin, having finished his meal, and stands, glancing at his phone for a brief second as he walks out of the restaurant. Wakatoshi still hasn’t replied to his text, asking if he wanted to meet. “Isn’t that what planning is about, approving and disapproving ideas?” he says, as calmly as he can, forcing his distress down.

“Well, you seem to be doing a shit ton of disapproving and none of the approving,” Atsumu drawls as he gets inside the car after Kiyoomi.

“There’s nothing to approve of, anyway,” he says with a shrug. He knows that he’s getting under Atsumu’s skin, poking at sore spots and thinning the thread of his patience. It’s kind of thrilling, like throwing rocks at an angry lion just for the hell of it. He’s probably plotting Kiyoomi’s death by now, if Kiyoomi knows him well.

He snaps his fingers in front of Atsumu’s face, smirking. “Are you planning on getting a move on anytime this century?”

Recognition blooms on Atsumu’s face like nebulae after a star explosion. He stares at Kiyoomi with narrowed eyes, unamused. “Very funny. How clever of you, Omi.” He rolls his eyes, sighing as he slumps back to his seat. “And about the food for the party—”

Kiyoomi makes a face. “Can you stop talking about the damn food?” he complains, the smug amusement extinguished from his tone, which is now irate and rougher.

“What is up with you today?” Atsumu asks, turning his body so he’s fully facing Kiyoomi, arms folded over his chest.

The funny thing is that Kiyoomi isn’t certain of why he’s acting like this. Perhaps it has something to do with how his agitation is making him do irrational things, like taking out all his negative energy on someone who’s not even at fault. Perhaps it’s because his sense of stability gets thrown out the window when the situation involves Wakatoshi.

How unhealthy, he thinks bitterly, though he finds nothing in him that cares.

“What are you so fucking angry for?” Atsumu continues to demand, gesturing wildly with his hands. “I’m just trying to do what I’m told!”

“So am I!” Kiyoomi snarls. 

“Yeah, which is why we’re on the same side, so why are you angry at me?”

No. 

They’re not. 

Atsumu doesn’t know what it’s like to long for someone so desperately and only have him leave fleeting kisses on your skin, on your lips, only have him for a few hours at most — borrowed and stolen and begged time — barely enough to keep you satiated, always leaving you wanting more. Atsumu doesn’t know what it’s like to have to keep the person you love at arm’s length when all you want is to keep him close, because God forbid anyone finds you frolicking the valleys of your bed, navigating the fountains of your lust with your father’s secretary, one whose family had long since been at your service.

Atsumu doesn’t know what it’s like to need someone so much that, once, the thought of wanting to carve open your stomach so they can climb inside and be with you forever crosses your mind at the highest of your sexual pleasure, at the lowest of your morose yearning.

They are not the same.

“No, we’re not,” he says, giving Atsumu a long, silent look for one wordless moment, daring him to speak, to protest, before climbing out the car and slamming the door shut behind him. He shoves his balled fists in his coat pockets, jumping slightly at the shock of cold metal grazing his knuckles. Walking a couple more steps farther to ensure that Atsumu is no longer watching him leave, he closes his fingers around his phone and pulls it out, dialling a number he’s known by heart.

No answer. No text messages either.

He sighs as he turns the corner.

  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


Kiyoomi looks at Atsumu with a look that’s a mixture of exasperation and amusement. He has his knuckle pressed to his cheek, one leg hanging over the other as he leans back to his seat. He looks particularly dashing in his three-piece suit, bowtie and all. His usual side part is slicked back expertly to enhance more of his flawless features. And whenever Atsumu walks past him, the fragrance of his expensive perfume combined with his natural, clean scent almost makes Atsumu want to get on his knees.

“Why are you fretting so much about this?” he asks Atsumu, eyebrow quirked, following Atsumu as he paces around the room. “Haven’t you gone to events like this before?”

Atsumu scoffs, halting in his tracks. “Are you kidding?” he says. “How the hell can I _not_ freak out when I know that Nicolas Romero — _Nicolas Romero —_ is attending the same event as me?” He gasps, eyes widening. “We’re probably going to get to meet him. Holy shit, I’m going to meet Nicolas Romero, the best spiker in the world!” 

There’s a boyishly adoring glint in his eyes that makes Kiyoomi laugh.

He swiftly turns to the sound, narrowing his eyes at Kiyoomi. “Hey, you like volleyball too. Why aren’t you as excited as me?” He does that animated gasp again when realization strikes him like a mallet, this time covering his mouth with his fingers. “Don’t tell me you’ve met him already.”

Kiyoomi shrugs, shit-eating grin on his face. He pulls out his phone and stands to stride across the room to Atsumu, coming to a stop next to him. “See this?” He angles his phone so Atsumu can see the screen. “Me with Romero at a bar after one of his games.” He swipes at the screen. “Me and Romero on a cruise ship.” He swipes left again. “Me and Rom—”

“You motherfucker.” Atsumu wraps his arm around Kiyoomi’s neck in a chokehold. 

“Hey! Hands off,” Kiyoomi says, laughing.

“That’s so unfair!” Atsumu whines. “How have you met my hero already and I haven’t?”

“I guess I’m just built different,” Kiyoomi teases. He pries open Atsumu’s folded arm and breaks himself free from his hold. 

“I hate you,” Atsumu says staring blankly as Kiyoomi fixes his ruffled hair. A thought crosses his mind, and he visibly brightens. “On the bright side,” he says, slinging an arm around Kiyoomi’s as he smoothly steers them out the door. “Now that I know you two are well-acquainted, you have no excuse not to introduce me to my childhood idol.”

Kiyoomi groans. “Do I have to?”

“Yes,” Atsumu says brightly, straightening Kiyoomi’s lopsided bowtie with one hand. “I’m your husband, so that’s your job.”

“As long as you promise not to be all weird about it.”

“Honey, are you calling me an embarrassment?”

“Yes, actually. How clever of you to pick up on my intentions.”

“Thank you. I try my best.”

  
  
  
  
  


The Komori Gala is one of the most prestigious charity events in the business world. It is an annual fundraising event for the benefit of the Komoris’ hunger-relief organizations stationed all over the globe. As such, international personalities are not excluded from the gala and are expected to make their appearance alongside Japanese entrepreneurs. 

Sometimes the event organizers invite other notable luminaries that aren’t at the height of the entrepreneurial sphere but rather excel in different fields like academics, art, and sports. The previous year, American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift attended the gala and swept her fellow guests off their feet with her stunning beauty, overwhelming talent, and generous financial donation. 

This year’s Komori Gala is spearheaded by Kiyoomi’s cousin, Motoya. Both he and Kiyoomi are also volleyball fans, so it is no surprise that Motoya thought to write Nicolas Romero’s name on the guest list.

Atsumu can barely rein his excitement in, at the thought of getting to meet his childhood hero. He presses his lips together as he clings to Kiyoomi’s arm, leaving the other man to navigate them through the sea of wealthy, well-dressed guests.

He’d gone to the gala twice in the past. Both times with his family, and once with his friend Ojiro Aran. He’d been young, then, barely of age, so he hadn’t really cared much for formal gatherings. Needless to say, both times had bored him to death, his only saving grace being Aran or his brother. And he hadn’t gone to the ball since.

“Motoya,” Kiyoomi says with a curt nod, gesturing to Atsumu. “This is my husband, Atsumu, as you may know. Atsumu, this is my cousin, Motoya.”

“Hi!” Motoya says with a friendly grin. Motoya is a tall, large-built man with bright brown hair and rounded eyebrows. His face seems to be a permanent, tangible manifestation of kindness, because there are no traces of hard cruelty or cold aloofness in his features. Other than his tall and sizable build, there seems to be virtually no telltale that he and Kiyoomi are cousins. In fact, if you hadn’t known them beforehand, you never would have been able to guess that they’re related at all.

“Hello.” Atsumu is a little startled by their distinct personality difference, but he manages to muster up enough politeness in his voice, so as not to tamper Motoya’s bubbliness. “Nice setup you got here,” he says with a pleased smile.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Motoya tells him. “Not from my cousin, obviously, but ever since you two married, well, people talk, you know?”

“Oh?” Atsumu says engagingly. He doesn’t really care for rumors, but he projects an appropriate amount of curiosity in his voice so Motoya wouldn’t think that he’s uninterested. “And what do they say about me?”

Motoya waves his hand. “Oh, you know, the usual. How you’re a joy to be around and all.”

Atsumu has heard many things about himself, but that’s definitely a first. Both Kiyoomi and Atsumu snort at the same time, but Motoyo doesn’t seem to have noticed the latter, looking at his cousin with an appalled look on his face. Atsumu is half grateful that someone else is offended on his behalf.

“Kiyoomi,” Motoya chides, but he doesn't say more and just shakes his head, chuckling. “What is it with you couples and your affectionate insults? That’s one thing I’ll never understand.”

Kiyoomi is quick to steer his cousin to a topic Atsumu had been waiting to be brought up. “So you invited Nicolas, huh?” he says. “Has he arrived yet? Atsumu wants to meet him.”

“So you're into the sport too,” Motoya notes appreciatively, nodding. “My cousin sure knows how to pick his partners, eh?”

Atsumu shifts uncomfortably under the weight of the comment. He’s slowly learning to not hate his situation but the ever-present reminder of how he had been forced into it still stings. “Of course,” he says with a fake laugh, nudging Kiyoomi’s side with his elbow. “Did you really expect anything less from your cousin?”

“That’s so bold of you to say,” Kiyoomi comments. “I believe that my taste in men took a turn for the worst when I ended up with you.”

If Motoya noticed the change in Atsumu’s stance or the half-truth in Kiyoomi’s comment, he doesn’t show. He only laughs at their antics and points to the far left wing of the room. “Last I saw Nicolas he was over there, entertaining the sons of some tycoons.”

“That’s a rather negative-sounding word to describe your very important guests,” Kiyoomi observes.

Motoya rubs his eye sheepishly. “Yeah, well, these rich, middle-aged men can be so infuriating at times,” he admits. “Most of them don’t give a shit about the charity; they just want to be part of the gala to stroke their egos, just to feel like they’re part of something that everyone else is.”

“At least they’re contributing to the cause,” Atsumu tells him, sounding upbeat. “Don’t the tickets cost, like, millions in yen?”

“Yeah,” Motoya says with a conspiratorial wink, as if he'd let Atsumu in on a secret. “Anyway, you said you wanted to go meet Nicolas?” He clears his throat, his signature friendly smile back on his face. “I won’t keep you long, then; you two go on ahead. Enjoy the night!”

Atsumu waves Motoya goodbye as Kiyoomi impatiently pulls him towards the alleged direction of Nicolas’s whereabouts. “We’re really doing this,” he says to himself, as if in a daze. “I’m actually going to see him in the flesh, not just on TV. Oh, man. Samu’s gonna regret not coming with me.”

Kiyoomi glances at him. “Calm your tits,” he says. Something must have caught his eye then because he stands taller and pulls Atsumu along with more determination. “There he is,” he says, nodding to a tall man who seemed to tower over everyone not just in height but in presence.

Atsumu’s mouth hangs open, barely containing his childish excitement. 

Nicolas spots them immediately. “Kiyoomi-kun, it’s been a long time!” He walks over and gives Kiyoomi a pat on the back. “I heard you got married! Sorry I couldn’t come.”

Kiyoomi waves his apology away, the ring glinting under orange chandelier light. “It’s no big deal. You were on a vacation with your family, yes?”

“Yes, that’s correct.” Nicolas’s eyes land on Atsumu, lighting up. “Ah, this must be the lucky man.” He extends his hand in greeting. “Hello, I’m Nicolas Romero.”

“Yes, I know who you are, sir,” Atsumu says, shaking his hand, and it takes everything in him not to piss his paints, because what the fuck. This is his hero right in front of him, and he’s everything Atsumu thought he would be: dashing and warm and larger than life. Whoever said that people shouldn’t meet their heroes must have been idolizing the wrong personalities. “I’m a big fan.”

“Oh?” Atsumu hadn’t thought it’s possible, but Nicolas’s smile seems to have widened even more. “You really know how to pick your men, eh, Kiyoomi-kun?”

The comment doesn’t even faze Atsumu’s high. 

Kiyoomi, however, wrinkles his nose. “I’m not too sure about that,” he says.

Nicolas laughs, turning to Atsumu. “Did you know Kiyoomi-kun had nearly the same reaction as you when we first met?” he says.

Atsumu looks at Kiyoomi incredulously, then snorts. “I mean, I guess I can see it, since he, too, is into you.” He blinks, realizing what he said. “I mean…” he stammers, “into _volleyball_ — I— you know what I mean.”

Nicolas pats his shoulder, eyes twinkling in amusement. “You needn’t be so nervous around me,” he says reassuringly. “I’m just me!”

“Yeah, Tsumu,” Kiyoomi teases. “No need to be so flustered around the man.”

Atsumu scowls. “You’re one to talk.”

Someone taps the microphone on stage to test it, making all heads in the vicinity turn to its direction. Motoya is standing on a raised platform decorated with fancy murals depicting pictures of children around the world. “Good evening, guests. Tonight’s auction will be held in two hours. For those who are interested, I suggest you take your fill of food if you haven’t yet and head downstairs to secure your seats. Thank you.”

“That’s my cue,” Nicolas pipes up. “There’s this vintage item they’re auctioning that my wife wants me to get for her birthday.” He smiles warmly. “Are you two attending the auction?”

“I’m not,” Kiyoomi says with a shake of his head. A waitress passes, offering him a glass of champagne, which he takes.

“Me neither,” says Atsumu. “You have fun, then… I think. Do people have fun in auctions?”

Nicolas laughs. “I’ll try my best to enjoy it,” he says. “It was nice talking to you both, especially you, Atsumu. I’ll see you two around, yes?”

“Sure,” Kiyoomi says.

“Bye,” Atsumu calls. When Nicolas is out of earshot, he turns to Kiyoomi. “You invited him to our wedding?”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t think it was important to tell me?”

“Why?” Kiyoomi says. “We weren’t friends then, remember?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because it’s also my wedding?” Atsumu says sarcastically.

Kiyoomi waves a dismissive hand. It strikes Atsumu then, under the warm orange glow of the chandeliers, that his eyes lose its usual spiteful fire whenever he looks at Atsumu. “Whatever, he didn’t get to go, anyway.”

Around them, the crowds of guests slowly start to thin, as most of them head downstairs to take part in the auction for charity. Someone replaces Motoya onstage and starts to strum on their guitar, singing a ballad for their lost love.

Atsumu feels something in his chest twitch, but he pushes the music out of his mind and grins mischievously as he recalls what Kiyoomi had told him before. “Hey, remember what you said to me a couple of months back?” he says slyly, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Oh no,” says Kiyoomi, mildly disturbed. “I don’t like this look.”

Atsumu makes a cackling noise, like _hehehe_. “You said that we’d never be friends.” He makes a show of stroking his chin with his fingers. “I believe your exact words were, ‘I won’t pretend to be in love with you or even treat you as a friend.’ Correct me if I’m wrong.”

Atsumu gets the reaction he aimed for: Kiyoomi’s skin heats up in a light blush, traces of red blooming on the tips of his ears. “You’re wrong,” he mumbles defiantly. “And I’m correcting you now.”

Clicking his tongue in mock disapproval, Atsumu shakes his head. “No, I’m fairly certain my memory doesn’t fail me,” he says, smirking. “That didn’t age well, now, did it?” he teases. He slings an arm around Kiyoomi. “The fact that you said we weren’t friends then indicates that we’re friends now. How did the tables turn so well against your favor, Omi-kun? How have you fallen so deeply in love with me?”

“Shut up,” Kiyoomi says, scowling, but Atsumu can tell that he’s only fighting off a smile.

“Our close proximity probably makes your heart run wild, huh? Is your blood rushing to your cheeks right now as well as your dick?” Atsumu prods further, poking his finger on Kiyoomi’s chest with a playful smirk. “You perverted bastard, Omi-omi, you.”

“Me?” Kiyoomi laughs, pulling away from the half-embrace to mess with Atsumu’s hair. “You’re the one who can’t get your hands off me. What an amateur move, Tsumu, shifting the blame on me.”

Atsumu whistles. “Touché. You’ve gotten better at snarky banter, Omi. I feel oddly proud for some reason.”

“I’ve always been filled to the brim with wit,” Kiyoomi says haughtily. “But back then I’d decided that you’re not worth wasting my time on.”

Atsumu jabs at his side with an elbow. “So now you think I’m worth it, huh? How times have changed, Omi.”

“Leave it to you to find the good in everything,” Kiyoomi says with a playful roll of his eyes.  
“It’s part of my irresistible charm. Why do you think everyone always ends up liking me?”

There’s an odd feeling in Atsumu’s chest, placing a calming, tentative hand around the hurt. He feels it burst in the cavity of his ribs, like a supernova in slow motion — silent and gradual. Bright and burning in all its explosive glory. He feels flames licking at the edges of his pain, tearing it down inch by inch with haphazard destruction. And it feels good, to laugh like this without thinking of anything else but the now. To remember the touch of a friend and feel life flowing from the tips of their fingers to the hem of your suit. To breathe with all the carrying capacity of your lungs and find that your ribs don’t hurt as much anymore.

The poets always fixate on legends and heroes, epics of shipwrecks and wars, chronicles of mysterious oracles and dangerous quests, tales of noble warriors and honorable royalty. Choirs sing hallelujahs of holy grails and unconditional sacrifices, of feeble plants fighting to grow on concrete, of selfless saints and their altruism. They cement the glorious feats, the divine moments, of historical personalities in song and stone and scroll, in cave wall and canvas, in drawing and dream. 

But what the poets and choirs don’t tell you is that one does not need to be bold and thunderous to be a legend. You need not to be royalty or warrior to make your own history. You do not need to be a god to make the moments in your life divine. Loud does not always mean impact. Sometimes, it’s the way that you make someone laugh after a long day that makes you a hero. It’s the way their eyes disappear and the thin line of their mouth morphs to an upward curve that makes you feel like you can hold the world in your hand, cup the sun in your palms without scorching your skin. 

The relief that comes with the evidence that Atsumu’s heartbreak and grief —the searing pain in his heart that threatens to tear him apart if he doesn’t stop thinking about the man he loves — aren’t perpetual feels nearly as goddamn good as the genuine elation that’s vibrating in the marrows of his bones right now.

“Thank you,” he says softly, the orange glow of the lights making his blonde hair look a vibrant gold. The singer onstage is now singing a more upbeat song, and Kiyoomi doesn’t seem to have heard him speak, eyes trained on the stage, body moving slightly to the music as he holds the neck of his champagne glass expertly between his fingers. 

He looks back at Atsumu, and when he smiles, there is divinity in his eyes.

  
  


  
  


  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  


**All Hearts for Atsumu and Kiyoomi Sakusa at the Komori Gala!**

By Kuroo Tetsurou, Nekoma Celebrity News writer — September 25, 2020

Several pictures of the recently-married couple from the Komori Gala gave the internet heart eyes for most of the evening. And the buzz of their romance even lived on until the following day. It’s clear that the two are head over heels for each other, and honestly, it makes me want to fall in love myself, just to know what it’s like to look at someone and see the universe.

Atsumu and Kiyoomi definitely know what it’s like, with the way that they haven't been able to tear their eyes off each other, like even turning away would be a crime too heinous for them to commit. (If this isn’t what true love is, then I don’t want it.) 

“I want what they have,” tweets user _@rin9zha_ , attaching pictures of the couple in mid-laugh, Atsumu’s arm around Kiyoomi’s shoulders. 

“They are the blueprint,” says _@bestofmlm._ The photos affixed to their tweet are of Atsumu and Kiyoomi looking at each other with soft smiles.

Personally, I don’t believe it’s humanly possible to look at them and _not_ melt in a puddle of hopeless romanticism, yearning for a partner you have yet to meet, longing to have a love as warm and true as that. (I’m definitely not speaking from experience, haha.)

I think we can all agree that if you claim not to have your heartstrings tugged by them, you’re just lying.

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


**Japan’s support for world-renown businessman Ryuga Sakusa doesn’t fall short**

By Tanaka Kiyoko, Karasuno Feature writer — November 4, 2020

Following the 2020 House of Councillors election last month, the electoral results are solid proof of Japan’s trust and devotion for well-known philanthropist and entrepreneur Ryuga Sakusa, CEO of globally competitive Sakusa Enterprises, after having won a seat in the House without much difficulty.

Ryuga Sakusa has, time and time again, proven himself a good man, if all his generous donations to various charities and organizations worldwide are any indication. Among his notable deeds of goodness is the Pro-Poor Project, spearheaded by himself and his son, Kiyoomi, wherein they gift job opportunities to those who need it (should they apply for the program), complete with all the workplace benefits that they believe should be a human right, such as free healthcare services, paid short leaves of absence, and more.

Given Ryuga’s character and the name he has built for himself, it’s no surprise that the masses have decided to elect him, and not only that, the range of his influence also widened after his son and Isamu Miya’s, Atsumu, got married earlier in the year.

Though the masses are already certain that Ryuga will not fail the country, they continue to hope that he and the rest of the nation’s leaders will guide Japan to better places using the power bestowed upon them.

  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


Usually, people like Atsumu who have companies to run, meetings to attend to, businesses to take care of, work even on the weekends. Saturdays are no different from the weekdays; all work, no play. Relaxing is a luxury they can afford to pay, but rarely do. 

But Atsumu hasn’t always been one to abide by the norm. There’s a reason, after all, why he doesn’t have all too many friends. A reason why he isn’t a people person, though in his later years he has learned to pretend, to present himself in ways that will show him in a wonderful light in the eyes of whomever he’s speaking with. 

He generally doesn’t conform to anyone’s standards if it doesn’t benefit him. He works on his own pace, lives on his own terms, the only exception to this being his father.

And so, where busy men like him run the office or do workplace stuff even on weekends, Saturdays to him meant lounging around and watching shows. And the best thing about being his own boss is that no one can really tell him what to do and what not to do, so he is free to do just that; lying on the couch, body angled sideways to face the TV, blanket draped over to hide the lower half of his body, one of his legs raised and slung on the back of the couch, something he’d never do if he had been in the living room of his childhood home. It had been his turn to sleep in the living room last night, so he still hasn’t changed clothes or taken a shower or switched positions since he first woke, pushed the pull-out couch back into place, and let the cleaners in through the front door to do their weekly tidying of the house.

Around him, they move and bustle about, arranging misplaced furniture, collecting dirty clothes from the hamper to wash, sweeping and mopping the floors. If Atsumu being in the living room while they cleaned were a hindrance to them, they don’t show it.

And all the while Atsumu laughs and mutters comments to himself as the show he’s watching progresses, episode after episode of entertainment slipping through his fingertips quickly, as the world around him moves forward and around while he does not move at all.

“How long have you been watching that crap?” Kiyoomi asks, finally emerging from the bedroom and descending the stairs, all freshly-showered and clean, like he always is in the mornings. “Have you even eaten yet?”

Back when they had been at odds with each other and their home was a warzone, Kiyoomi always made sure to be up and out of the house before the cleaners arrived, so as to ensure that they won’t notice the great divide of hell between them, leaving Atsumu to make excuses for his absence. Now that they’re friends, though, he no longer leaves on the weekends if he doesn’t have an urgent errand or two to run, and Atsumu learns that he, too, likes to stay indoors and laze around if there aren’t other, more important things to do.

“No, I haven’t,” Atsumu says, not taking his eyes off the television screen. “But there’s food on the table already. And excuse me, how dare you say that this show is crap? I’ll have you know that it’s positively hilarious.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say.” Kiyoomi’s voice fades as he disappears into the dining area. Faintly, Atsumu hears the clanging of plates bumping to each other, the dragging of a chair away from the table to make room for a person to sit on, the sound of chopsticks against ceramic. He suddenly wants to follow Kiyoomi, his stomach eager to be filled with breakfast and coffee, but this part of the episode is just too good to leave in the middle of. 

He decides to finish it first before finally moving from his position on the couch. Breakfast can wait.

To his surprise, Kiyoomi comes back, holding a tray of piping hot food and coffee, a young boy trailing behind him with another tray similar to the first one. He smiles at Atsumu as he sets the tray of breakfast on the coffee table before him, dipping his head before he leaves.

Atsumu looks at Kiyoomi with a questioning brow raised. “What’s this?”

“Food,” says Kiyoomi as he sits on one of the single-seaters flanking the chaise lounge, holding his mug close to his lips and blowing lightly on the surface of the liquid inside. 

“Yeah, no shit,” Atsumu quips, rolling his eyes. “I thought you hate it when people eat in the living room.” He changes the pitch of his voice to imitate Kiyoomi. “What’s the purpose of having an area of the house designed specifically for consuming food if people do not eat in it?”

“It’s nearly ten in the morning and I know for a fact that you’re not moving from your place unless that stupid episode of your stupid show ends,” Kiyoomi says simply. “Why are you asking? Did you rather want to starve? I can have them take the food back, if that’s what you prefer.”

“Not at all,” says Atsumu, adjusting himself to an upright sitting position, one that’s more appropriate for food consumption. He reaches for the tray to place it on his lap. “I’m just making a simple observation that it’s a little out of character for you to be initiating this kind of arrangement.”

“Fuck you,” Kiyoomi says. “What’s this show about, anyway?”

And Atsumu launches into an animated discussion, pausing the episode so he wouldn’t miss a thing, flailing his arms around as he speaks. His eyes light up in a way that reminds Kiyoomi of a sunflower, with his sun-laced hair that looks like the golden petals of flowers in full bloom, and the bright, joyous manner with which he carries himself in this exact moment, and suddenly Kiyoomi can’t understand why he ever harbored such intense disdain for this man all those months ago.

“All I’m getting from this,” says Kiyoomi when Atsumu comes to a satisfied stop, turning back to his food and his sitcom, “is that you’re watching a show about a grocery store.”

“It’s a very interesting grocery store,” Atsumu defends, “and Jonah is so damn fine.” He gestures at the screen. “Look at the guy, Omi. With his pretty little face and his pretty little smile. Isn’t he dreamy?”

“I don’t know,” says Kiyoomi with a noncommittal shrug. “I’m not one for white men.”

Atsumu laughs, choking on his coffee. 

“What? I’m just saying,” Kiyoomi says. “By the way, some family friends of ours are arriving from London tonight. They’ll be guests back home, and Father told me to personally pick them up. Feel like coming with?”

“Sure,” Atsumu says. “I’ve got some stuff to check for work tonight, but I guess I can just let my secretary do the job just this once.”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes. “Maybe if you stopped watching those situational comedies of yours and started, I don’t know, actually doing your job.”

“Omi, I am my own boss, and I decide when to work and when not to.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t even bother replying.

They watch the rest of the episode, eating their breakfast in the quiet bubble that had formed around them, and to Kiyoomi’s ears the rest of the other sounds fall away, muffled, like party music coming from the house across the street, pulsing and lively, but not so much to get you going feral. There is an odd sensation in his chest, a warmth that feels almost alive and fluid. He glances sideways, at Atsumu, watches him laugh and slap his knee, eyes disappearing in the purity of his elation, and his body is a vineyard as the warmth in his chest grows, spreads like vines, curls around the milky white beams of his skeletal system.

It’s a foreign feeling, one he hasn’t felt in a long while. Warmth is often a far-flung dream, a distant song you can only sing in your memory, a remote concept you can’t explore, when all the world around you is a barren, wintry wasteland, snow stretching out for miles and miles beyond your vision, white and blinding and eternal. When all he felt for months on end is lust and longing and unrequited love — a dish served cold with only a spoonful or two of spice to keep you ravenous for more, even as your mouth prickles with the bitter tinge of not being wanted, not being loved the way you want to be.

He doesn’t regret having devoted most of his life to chasing after Wakatoshi, because after all, the high was always worth the fall, but this strange sensation nestling itself in his chest, moving in and making it its home, makes him wonder how many more of these emotions he had missed out on. Would he have been happier, then, if he hadn’t relentlessly pursued a man who would never look at him and see what it means to love, and instead gone after other people, who would have given him the taste of what it means to feel warm?

Having been raised on top of the world, he’d always known what it was like to step foot on the moon, known what it was like to go places not everyone had the privilege to go to, known what it was like to touch the heavens and not fall short, not have his fingers graze thin air instead of the sky itself. And so when Ushijima made him see stars at the back of his eyelids, brought him high above the clouds and pushed him back down with a gratifying finish — though it had made him feel giddy and warm at his core — it hadn’t exactly been anything new. 

He’s used to extravagant displays, and knows he’s worthy of only the best; people bend over backwards to give him Polaris, presented in a pretty box crafted from the bark of the oldest century tree and shiny ribbons weaved from the finest silk, and then some. And because it’s all he’s ever known, he hadn’t recognized the appeal of a simple, quiet breakfast with a warm, happy man whose face seems to go backwards in time to that of a young boy’s whenever he smiles.

However alien this territory feels under the soles of his feet, he’s not sure whether he can live without it, can still bring his limbs to move without the calming buzz of energy running through his bloodstream, now that he’s gotten a taste of it. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Late afternoon comes soon enough, though it does not burn the sky its usual orange and gold. It is instead drab and dreary, clouds hanging low and heavy and dark with water, and soon Atsumu knows it will pour. The cleaners have long since finished their work, and it is now only he and Kiyoomi left at home. They will be setting out in a short while to have dinner and pick Kiyoomi’s family friends up at the airport. Kiyoomi is in the bathroom, taking his time in the bathtub, soaking and scrubbing at his skin to rid it of whatever invisible grime he’d felt was there. 

Having already had his time in the bath, Atsumu waits for Kiyoomi by the window, staring at the murky sky of clouds outside. Atsumu can nearly smell the oncoming downpour in the air, feels it in the way the humidity sticks to the surface of his skin. Winter is fast approaching; a looming darkness in the horizon of suns, a kind of sickly cold, a dread that clings tightly to your bones, crawls up the rungs of your trachea, until all you can taste is the ice on your tongue. He’s not really a winter person. Fall is more bearable, the slow transition between contrasting seasons, the tiny opening of the gate, the cracks in the walls that break apart enough to let an eye get a glimpse of whatever is on the other side. But winter is the unwanted damp that chills your spine and freezes you to death. It’s the hunger for heat, no matter how much it burns your fingertips, singes the clothes on your back, coaxes the hot sweat out of your pores. The loneliness that carves hollowness between your shoulder blades where your wings should have been. 

He’s a son of summer, a child of the sun, and though his birthday falls nowhere near the season of solar glory, he thrives where there is grass and the earth is alive, shrivels where there is snow and the world is asleep.

Two years ago, he hadn’t really minded the cold. He had someone to keep him warm, to help him shoulder the weight of the sun’s absence. And now he has none of that, and the frost is all the more impenetrable.

He supposes it can’t be all that bad, after all he does not live alone under this roof, but if the cold tugs at him in his sleep and he only has blankets instead of a lover’s arms to keep him warm, what then? Will that be enough, he thinks, to keep the ice at bay? To keep the cold from dragging him back to the sleepless nightmare he’d had to endure when the weather was especially blue and white?

As a child, he’d always slept next to his mother or his brother when he could not bear the chill anymore, could not keep up the pretense that the winter isn’t wearing his bones to dust. When he was older he craved the warmth of temporary partners, of quick flings, and anything else to ward off the frost. A couple of times he even climbed under Osamu’s sheets despite his twin’s many protests, desperate to finally get even a wink of sleep in the midst of an especially horrible snowstorm. Two years ago, he’d slept next to Shinsuke on the bad days, and not once had he awoken in the middle of the night for fear that the toes on his feet had turned to ice.

His heart twists with longing again, the same way it always does when he thinks of his ex, but he can tell that the sting isn’t as sharp. It does not spread like fire from his chest to the rest of his body, does not pulse along his bloodstream like poison. It beats at his heart, yes, but it does not go further than that. The pain is instinctual, because the mourning for a lost love never ends, the way you would grieve the end of your favorite book or show — when you look back at it, it hurts — but it fades over time as all things do. Old wounds are replaced with fresh skin, dancing over the flawed flesh, shielding it like a secret, and the pain is forgotten until you voluntarily seek it.

Kiyoomi knocks on the glass beside his head. “Where’d you go?” he says. “I was calling for you; let’s leave, if we want to get dinner before my friends arrive.”

Behind the wheel, Atsumu asks Kiyoomi if he eats fast food.

“Of course,” he says. “You think me so snobby that I wouldn’t eat ‘commoner food’?”

Atsumu rolls his eyes at the remark. “I just thought that fast food junk wouldn’t be enough to satiate your expensive palate.”

By the time they round the corner and enter the drive-through, the rain is already cooking up a storm, hard patters beating the roof of their car like end of the world drums, thunder rumbling through the heavens like a god’s otherworldly cough. Atsumu flinches when he sees lightning flash overhead. 

As they’re approaching the airport, the storm only gets worse, and he predicts that soon grey will be the only thing he’ll see, fat droplets of rain obscuring his vision like a rougher, more tangible fog. They’d eaten as they drove on, and when the car finally stops before a small group of three that Kiyoomi says are his friends, they’d already finished their dinner.

The first is a wide-eyed man with black and white hair that’s gelled up in a way that makes him look eerily like an owl. Even from a distance, everything about him is loud, from the way his eyes are large when he speaks to the way he is tall and looms over his other companions. This must be Bokuto Koutarou, Atsumu assumes, based on the short descriptions Kiyoomi had provided him with on their way to the airport.

The next is the owlish man’s polar opposite: reserved in the way that he tucks his arms firmly to his sides, clasping his fingers together at the front as if trying to take up as less space as possible; quiet in the way that he only listens as the louder man talks animatedly, seldom offering some comments here and there. If Atsumu isn’t mistaken, then this must be Akaashi Keiji. The one who is loud with his thoughts instead of words, thinks with his mind instead of his mouth. 

The third is an even shorter guy, eyes on his gaming device, hair of dull yellow and dark brown roots falling over the front of his head as he tilts it downwards. Not a care for the world save for the one behind the screen. Kiyoomi had said that Kozume Kenma likes to fold in on himself, but can unfurl if he feels like it, if he’s comfortable enough. To Atsumu, it seemed like a challenge, to see if he has the talent to coax this reserved guy out of his safety net.

An attendant helps them store their suitcases in the trunk. 

“Kiyoomi-chan!” Koutarou exclaims as he enters the car first. “Do you know how much I missed you?”

“I would much rather not hear it,” says Kiyoomi bluntly. “How fortunate that your flight wasn’t cancelled despite the weather.”

“It wasn’t all that bad back in London,” Keiji answers, taking his glasses off and wiping them with the hem of his shirt. “In fact, it wasn’t raining at all when we left, which was a surprise to me since we’re well into November.”

“And how was the trip?” Kiyoomi says politely. (He’d told Atsumu that he rather likes Keiji, who is well-mannered and bright.)

“Quite alright,” Keiji says. “Not as hectic as I thought it would be, considering the presence of our famous streamer over here.”

“This is Atsumu, yes?” Koutarou interjects excitedly, gesturing at Atsumu, who is in the driver’s seat. “I was at the wedding, but I didn’t get to properly meet you at the reception. I’m Bokuto!”

“Yes, I’m aware, Bokuto-san, I’ve heard a lot about you,” he says. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. You make quite an impression wherever you go, it seems.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Kenma comments. As if realizing that he’d said it out loud, he shrugs his earphones off. “Sorry. I’m Kenma, but Kiyoomi-san probably already told you.”

“Yes, that’s correct.” Atsumu smiles pleasantly, though none of the three can see it, as he is facing the windshield, eyeing the storm outside. “I’m afraid I can’t see anything in this weather,” he admits. “Bit difficult to drive at this rate, and I’m sure some of the roads have been closed for safety, too. Is it alright if we make a detour to our house to wait for the rain to stop before we drop you off at the Sakusas’ home?”

“Fine by me,” Koutarou says, grinning. The others nod in agreement.

“Have you three eaten yet?” Atsumu says conversationally.

“Yes, we have,” says Keiji. “Thank you.”

True to his word, driving back home through the relentless rain indeed proved to be a challenge, but Atsumu somehow manages, to his relief, and by the time they get home, the storm still shows no sign of stopping. How long, Atsumu wonders, had this much rain been accumulating in the clouds? It seems like a prologue for the winter that is coming, like the transition of the fall but harsher and louder. 

Atsumu shivers, thinking about the cold.

When the car is safely parked in the sheltered garage and the overhead doors close, the three guests jump out of the back seat, following Kiyoomi as he leads them inside. Atsumu hops off the driver’s seat, locks the car. He peeks at the trunk, wondering if he should manually retrieve their baggage himself, but decides against it, since they’re only here for a quick sojourn. He heads inside.

The rain and the jet-lag seem to have finally caught up to Koutarou, who is supposed to be unstoppable force and restless energy, because he sags on the sofa bed, all the life drained from him. “I’m tired,” he says, leaning on Keiji’s side.

“You can take a nap just fine, if you’d like,” Atsumu says quickly. “This is a pull-out couch, see?” He asks them to stand for a bit and unfolds the extendable part of the couch, pulling it out and stretching it so they have enough room to recline. “I’ll be upstairs in our room if you three need anything.”

“The storm doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon,” is what Kiyoomi greets him with when he enters the room. “I already told my father that there’s a possibility they might end up staying here for the night. Looks like the idea’s not so far off.”

“They’re sleeping downstairs,” informs Atsumu as he climbs under the sheets, grateful for the warmth. “They looked pretty exhausted to me, so I’m betting it’ll be daytime once they wake.”

“So I’ll be sleeping here tonight, then.” The statement hangs in the air, suspended in the silence that follows, along with the implication that comes with it, the unspoken question. The interrogative punctuation mark.

Atsumu cracks a smile. “How unfair,” he says. “If I had known you’d still be sleeping here tonight, I wouldn’t have braved the dark of the living room alone yesterday.” He pauses, a thought occurring to him. “You don’t mind?”

Kiyoomi looks at him, weighing the question on the scale of his mind, examining it for the proper answer. (Dimly, Atsumu wonders what he’s holding back.) “I guess I’ve known you long and well enough to be comfortable with sharing a bed,” he says. He makes a face. “That’s an odd sentence I never thought I’d live to say.”

“I’m honored, Omi, but frankly not the least bit surprised. I did say you’d end up liking me, didn’t I?” Atsumu quips, slipping out of bed to take the remote control from the dresser underneath the TV. “Fancy watching a sitcom about a grocery store?”

Kiyoomi laughs. “Alright.”

Atsumu never really knew what to expect, should he and Kiyoomi be in the same sleeping area at the same time. Mostly because he never believed the day would actually come, and because he never really wanted it to. And, in truth, it’s not so different as when they’re alone together, which is something that happens often, given their situation. But there’s something different about this moment, right here. Something intimate about sharing the same blanket, occupying the same space. The quietude that embraces them as they train their focus on the television, though Atsumu’s awareness is somewhere else. The fact that their bodies are lying side by side, a fair few inches of distance between them, but still close enough to touch. 

His fingers twitch, and graze Kiyoomi’s. He nearly jumps in surprise, electric energy humming in his bloodstream as it moves from the tips of his fingers to his brain. He hadn’t realized how close their hands were. He resists the urge to look at Kiyoomi, then, fights off the curiosity that’s building up inside him. 

He bites his lower lip, nonchalantly bringing his hands out from under the blanket, folding his arms over his chest. On the screen, Jonah and Amy are having a heated disagreement with the back warehouse employees. None of this fully registers in Atsumu’s mind. He shifts, crossing his legs, then shifts again to lean to the side. No position seems comfortable enough, and he’s painfully aware of how many times he’s moved in his place.

“You’re right,” Kiyoomi says after a while.

“Huh?” Atsumu asks, turning to him. “I mean, of course I am, but about what?”

“That Jonah guy _is_ fine.”

“I told you so.”

  
  
  
  


Halfway into the second season finale, Kiyoomi falls asleep. When the credits start to roll, Atsumu turns to look at him.

This is what he sees. A smoothed out portrait of a man on canvas birthed from a clumsy sketch on crumpled paper. A palimpsest of which the ancient inscriptions have been overwritten with contemporary maxims. Where his skin was once etched with invisible lines of worry — that downward purse of his lip when he’s displeased, that concerned glint on his eyes, that crease on his forehead when he raises his eyebrows — now hosts an image of ease, a new sheet of parchment that has not known the touch of a pen, a block of wood that has never met the blade of a carving knife. It’s as if sleep were a fountain of tension alleviation and Kiyoomi bathed in it, eyes closed and all.

How beautiful he looks when he isn’t in pain.

How alluring. Almost untouchable, when there are no worries that plague him. Like an unblinking star from a faraway galaxy. Pretty in pictures, even more breathtaking in person.

Atsumu swallows, but doesn’t look away. He can’t, not when Kiyoomi is so bewitching, so handsome even in his slumber. Surely, this is normal, to be enticed by a friend when he is this captivating. He stares. Everyone gets that tug in their chest when they look at someone attractive, even if they are just a friend. He stares. Being enticed by a friend is a perfectly ordinary occurrence, especially if he has the face of a divinity, and you see each other everyday, live under the same roof. He stares. Happens to everyone.

He wonders, then, how the object of Kiyoomi’s affection never once shared similar sentiments as he. How does he get to look the other way, when Kiyoomi fills the whole room? It seems like a crime, to Atsumu. An act of sacrilege. Aren’t there written laws for this felony?

Kiyoomi shifts in his sleep, and Atsumu immediately closes his eyes shut, heart threatening to escape the bony room of his chest. Now that the spell has been broken along with the visual contact, he musters the volition to turn his back to Kiyoomi, only opening his eyes again once he’s certain it’s the far wall he’ll be looking at.

He clutches the thick blanket tighter around his body, and wonders what it would feel like to have the broad of his back pressed against the warmth of Kiyoomi’s chest. It’s easy to think of things such as this when you’re lonely and there’s another person right next to you, easy to fall back to the rhythms of a once-familiar song when you have no one to dance with but the person beside you. The heart, after all, is more vulnerable when it is still healing, when the cracks of its armor are only just closing up. 

This is why you cannot trust a person when they are feeling too much of one thing at a time. Emotions, positive or not, are often the causation of a person’s spur-of-the-moment decisions. When you’re happy, you tend to take on as many opportunities as you can without thinking twice about the responsibilities they may entail. When you’re angry, you are rash, and you say and do things you don’t mean without considering the effects. When you’re lonely, you look for companionship in the wrong crowd.

A heart that’s teeming with emotions breeds impulsivity and destruction, but if you recognize this pattern, this path, these landmarks on the map, if you’re familiar with this terrain, it does not actually matter if you indulge the thoughts that are brought forth by these emotions, as long as the advances are not realized.

And so Atsumu lets himself think of Kiyoomi, lets his mind go over the picture of him, the slope of his nose, the picturesque manner his eyelashes rest atop that area above his cheeks and under his eyes when he closes them — because it does not actually mean anything to Atsumu. Because these thoughts are just the product of his loneliness.

Or so he tells himself.

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  


When you’re young and eager, birthdays are an annual thing to look forward to. A thing to be excited about, when it comes. On the days impending, it’s all you can think about. You dream of shiny gifts and surprise parties and out-of-town trips. Of tasty cakes and blowing the flame out of numbered candles. Of helium balloons tied to your wrist to keep from floating away. When you’re a teenager, the excitement wanes, though the anticipation is still there. The need to celebrate, the want. When you’re alive for more than two decades, it does not seem special anymore, and you find that there is hardly a reason to commemorate it, even more so now that the love of your life is not within reach.

October fifth used to be a thing of happiness, him and his brother celebrating the day of their birth, him and his brother and the people they love.

This year, Atsumu tells his father he does not want to celebrate, tells his brother the same.

He is twenty-five years old, and there’s nothing he wants to do.

And yet.

And yet he wants to do everything, wants to keep moving in fear that staying still and stagnant would make time slip faster through the gaps of his fingers. He wants to go somewhere far, where the pain of having lived, of having loved, cannot follow him, but everywhere he goes, he sees the traces of his life in every footstep, every crash of the surf, every grain of sand. The remains of a bygone romance in every star, every cinema, every whiff of the old perfume he used to mark his scent. 

A pull in his gut, a gravity, tells him to go somewhere, to be pulled in the orbit of someplace he does not yet know. And because of this, the not knowing, he resolves instead to remain still despite himself. To remain under the quiet of his sheets on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth.

Or, that’s what he would have done, had Kiyoomi not dragged him out of bed.

“Omi,” he whines. “Leave me alone.”

“To mope around, all sulky, on your birthday?” Kiyoomi counters. “I think not. Go take a shower; you reek.”

“No, I don’t,” Atsumu protests even as he lets Kiyoomi force him into the bathroom.

He very much likes to do things on his own free will, likes to be in control, but there’s a relief that comes with someone taking the initiative when all you want to do is sink under quicksand. A kind of solace that has to do with the fact that someone else is stepping up for you, and you don’t have to do things on your own.

A bit odd, though, to see Kiyoomi ushering him around like this when once upon a time he hadn’t wanted a thing to do with Atsumu. How funny, the way fate works.

Atsumu can’t say he’s ungrateful, too, because that would be lying, and he is very glad to have Kiyoomi with him so he doesn’t have to be alone.

“Take me away, then, dear husband,” Atsumu says.

He doesn’t know what he expects, just that, knowing Kiyoomi, it would be a… unique experience, so to say. All these months of having known the guy, and he still doesn’t know how his mind works, sometimes.

“Where to?” Atsumu asks when he cannot take the suspense anymore.

“The furniture store,” Kiyoomi answers simply. (He looks good behind the wheel, Atsumu notes, like an experienced driver at ease on the road. He guides the car so meticulously, in the Kiyoomi way that he does most things, graceful and sure.)

“The furniture store?” Atsumu asks, confused.

“Yeah,” says Kiyoomi, offering no explanation whatsoever. “You’ll see.”

The furniture store is a large building that’s wide in floors and tall in stories. At first glance, the sheer abundance of the housewares and fitments makes the store look messy and unorganized, like the floor manager hadn’t done their job to keep things in order, but the more Atsumu looks, the more he sees that the emporium is divided into sections that are sorted by categories. This section is for tables, this one for chairs. That one’s for beds, over there’s for light fixtures. And within each division is another sub-category for each type of fitment. Plastic monoblocs go on this stack, and here go the upholstered seats. There, the ottoman beds. Here, the bunks.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” he asks

“Those pull-out couches that can double as a bed.”

Understanding dawns on Atsumu, and he laughs. “Oh, I see,” he says. “Leave it to you to give me a more comfortable sofa to sleep on for my birthday.”

“This benefits us both,” Kiyoomi insists.

“Why not just buy a different bed?”

“And where, exactly, are we going to put it?” Kiyoomi points out. “Master bedroom’s only big enough for one. We don’t have a spare room. And I’m sure we both agree that having to renovate the house is too much of a hassle to be something remotely worth considering. Did I miss anything?”

“You sure thought about this a lot,” Atsumu comments, interlocking his fingers together behind his head. “I’m touched, Omi, who knew you put so much effort and thought on giving me the perfect gift?”

“It’s remarkable, really, the lengths you go to in order to flatter yourself.”

“You say that like it’s an insult, but all I’m getting from that is you think I’m remarkable.”

“You just keep proving my point, Atsumu.”

A blonde attendant approaches them, seeming to have perceived their snarky exchange for confusion. “What can I assist you gentlemen with?” she says with a pleasant smile. A tag with a smiley face and no name is pinned to the left of her chest.

“We’re looking for a pull-out couch,” supplies Kiyoomi immediately. “Neither of us are well-versed in the minutiae of furniture, so I’m afraid we aren’t particularly reliable when it comes to choosing the best one to take home with us.”

“Not a problem,” she assures. She beckons for them to follow her, which they do so obligingly. She leads them to the section assigned for upholstered seats, passing an assortment of brightly colored bar chairs arranged neatly in rows. A few feet away are racks of various home decor like vases and conversation pieces that are so uniquely designed they seem startling in appearance. She rattles off about settees and other technicalities that Atsumu only half listens to, deciding to leave the matter entirely on Kiyoomi’s hands. He runs his fingers on the arm of one sofa, leaves light touches on the back of another.

Try as he might to avoid it, Atsumu’s mind strays from the present, untethered, unbound, like a birthday balloon tugging loose from a toddler’s wrist, and it goes from noting the variety of furniture within the store, to the way Kiyoomi’s dark curls frame his face, and it strikes just then Atsumu how Kiyoomi always looks effortlessly good no matter the setting. How does he do it? Is it something in his food or his water? If that’s the case, then the same must be true for Atsumu, since they share a home, not that he’s particularly insecure about his looks. He knows he can turn heads the moment he enters the room, can kill a man with a single smile. But Kiyoomi carries a different kind of beauty altogether, a kind Atsumu’s in awe of, more cruel and subtle, like a bullet you didn’t know was coming your way until it hits you. Cruel in that he can break someone’s self worth with a sneer. Subtle in that his features as individual building blocks don’t particularly carry a noteworthy appeal until they are put together. Quiet and elegant, but striking and lethal all the same.

“If you’ve finished admiring my face, would you please care to lend us a word regarding your preferences in seating accommodation?” It’s only until Kiyoomi’s words register in Atsumu’s hazy mind that he blinks, reorienting himself.

“Huh?” he says stupidly. “I mean.” He clears his throat. “Whatever works best with you works for me, too.”

Kiyoomi looks unconvinced. “Uh-huh,” he says. “Okay, then, because I was just telling Yachi-san here that a hot pink and bright yellow color combination would look appropriate for our current living room setting.”

Atsumu grimaces at the mental image he’d conjured at the statement. It hurt his eyes already and he’s not even seeing the real thing. “Is it?” he says, making a face. “Nothing against hot pink, but— oh, I get it,” he says belatedly. “You’re messing with me.”

Kiyoomi smirks. “No, shit,” he says. “Stop letting your mind wander, will you? I keep losing you.”

“Oh, my sweet, naive Omi,” Atsumu says patronizingly. “I fear there’s no getting rid of me, baby.” He pouts. “What a dreary fate, to live a life without me. I care for you too much to leave you without my breathtaking presence.”

“Shame. I was thinking of leaving you to your daydreams here and going home alone.”

“Now, darling, that’s no way to treat your husband.”

When the whole furniture matter was taken care of — something that had, inappropriately, taken far longer than your average appliance shopping, due to Atsumu and Kiyoomi’s never-ending repartee, much to Yachi-san’s amusement; Atsumu can’t deny, though, that this back and forth is entertaining and, dare he say, _fun_ , now that it’s been established that neither of them are genuinely agitated, and it’s purely for the sake of trying to one-up the other in an admittedly pointless battle of wits whose champion comes out only with bragging rights and not much of anything else — Kiyoomi asks Atsumu if there’s anything he’d like to do, anything he’d always wanted to do, adamant on keeping Atsumu from climbing back under his sheets of unmoving morosity. (Part of Atsumu is touched by the gesture, but he doesn’t think too much about it.)

“I don’t know, Omi,” Atsumu says with a shrug. “When you’ve got the world in the palm of your hands, ready to bend to your will any time you please, special occasions hardly become an excuse to do whatever you want.”

“You’re not wrong,” Kiyoomi concedes with a nod. “Surprisingly.”

“Amazing how all this time together has made me immune to your insults.”

“That or you’re simply aware of how true it is, so you find nothing in yourself that wants to dispute,” Kiyoomi says cheekily. “I personally lean towards the latter more.”

Atsumu ignores him. “Another incredible thing I’ve noticed during our time together,” he says, “is how you still haven’t picked up on my sense of humor. Seriously, Omi. It’s painful, hearing you attempt to crack a joke.”

“I’m not going to let you shame me for not being a clown.”

“I hate you.”

“You’re the whole damn circus.”

In the end, they decide on going on a spontaneous picnic, stopping by a couple of stores — and even the Sakusa household — to get the supplies and food that they need. The typical wicker basket shaped like a heart, because apparently Atsumu has an aptness for romantic clichés and also because he wanted to see the look on Kiyoomi’s face. A waterproof picnic blanket. A portable insulated cooler. Kiyoomi even called ahead and had his chefs back home prepare picnic-suitable food for them. 

They find a nice place overlooking a pretty view, and decide that this is where they want to watch the sunset. Kiyoomi spreads the blanket on the ground, and it ruffles like wings in the air, settling, then, over the earth by his feet. Atsumu hauls their stuff from the trunk and places them over the blanket.

“You are,” Atsumu huffs as he carries the basket in one hand, cooler in the other, “unduly inequitable, you know that? Making the birthday boy do all the manual labor.”

“I was under the impression that special occasions hardly make a difference to you.”

Ah, he walked right into that. “This is unjust, and I won’t stand for it.”

“Whatever,” Kiyoomi says, waving a dismissive hand as he claims a spot on the right side of the blanket. “Just hurry it up, will you?”

When the last of the picnic supplies have been retrieved, Kiyoomi opens a bottle of wine and pours both of them a glass each as Atsumu takes his seat next to Kiyoomi.

“To your twenty-fifth,” Kiyoomi says, offering his glass for a toast.

“To my twenty-fifth,” says Atsumu, “I guess.”

“To your impending midlife crisis, then,” Kiyoomi amends, taking a sip from his glass. “since you’re so uncertain.”

“Must you be so morbid?” Atsumu retorts, fingers curling around the neck of his wineglass as if he were cradling a well-preserved heirloom, the other hand lying flat on the ground beside him, beside Kiyoomi’s own hand, to support his upper body. He looks at Kiyoomi, then, and a sound of unmistakable pleasure nearly escapes his lips.

It is a fact that humanity perceives everything differently, even themselves. There are factors that humans take into consideration when gauging their understanding of one another, such as behaviors and traits and appearance. Personal expectations and attitudes also take part in this process of perception, and these influence your opinion regarding this other matter, this other human being. Such that, no two people see things the exact same way. There will always be differences, subtle and inconspicuous and seemingly unimportant, but they are there all the same.

There is a different version of yourself for every person you meet, every person who knows your name. To some, you could be a stranger. To others, an enemy. A hero. A lover.

Likewise, the rule also applies to those you meet. You lock eyes with a random person in the subway and think them a stranger, unfamiliar, whereas the child gripping their hand like a lifeline would think them a parent, a teacher. 

As such, different people tend to associate different feelings for the same person. Osamu would see Atsumu as his endearingly annoying twin, a thorn in his arse that he can’t quite get rid of, nor would he ever choose to. His numbered friends might see him as a happy-go-lucky, yet effortlessly capable man of success. The people he’s helped over the years would regard him a saint, a guardian angel.

And all the while Atsumu would think himself an excellent human being. A dashing one, of course.

There is no knowing, really, which version of you must be the solid, undeniable truth, because even your own perceptions of yourself can be warped and tainted, and vastly different from what other people see. (Humility and hubris coexist on a similar plane, but on different ends. Too much of the other is inherently perilous.)

There is no knowing the uncertain, but this, Atsumu knows, is the version of Kiyoomi that he perceives: a solid, unwavering heat that just might get him through the coming winter. 

And this is what else he knows, what he’s keenly aware of, but does not wholly understand: the warmth in his chest not unlike the toasty welcome of a hearth during a snowstorm, one he feels when he looks at Kiyoomi, the itch in his fingers when his hand is near Kiyoomi’s that he cannot seem to quell, the way his eyes always find themselves back to the clear glow of Kiyoomi’s face brought by the setting sun, the hunger for something he does not recognize. A prickling in his heart brought by Shinsuke’s absence that does not seem to go away anytime soon. The confusion that comes when the hurt and the warmth meet.

Maybe, like humility and hubris, this pain for one and this longing (or something) for another can coexist in a singular plane but on separate ends, and one day, hopefully, the ache will come to pass and subside completely so that it may only hurt when he thinks of it, and not his every waking second.

He does not know how Kiyoomi perceives him, does not know what version of him resides in Kiyoomi’s cognizance. A friend, perhaps. The middle ground, the line he cannot toe. Or something else entirely that Atsumu cannot get a grasp of.

He supposes it doesn’t really matter, in the end and in this moment, because he is not one to overthink, and because he does not also know whatever this feeling is, inside him, when he looks at Kiyoomi. Whether this is the beginnings of something familiar in a romantic sense or something new altogether, he is in the dark, and he is also uncertain if he wants to pursue it.

What really matters, here and now, is the fact that Kiyoomi went out of his way to celebrate this special occasion, even if Atsumu himself hadn’t wanted to. What really matters is that they are here, watching the sunset, sharing a meal and a bottle of wine, side by side. 

Atsumu hasn’t been this happy in a long, long while.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


And if it cannot be love,

well, then, at least it is not lonely.

— _V.E. Schwab,_

_The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue_

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


For his final semester English Literature project in high school, Atsumu chose the classic _The Secret History_ to write a ten-page analysis about. He pored over Donna Tartt’s novel like a devout follower would their book of worship, picking apart every paragraph, every line, until the plot itself starts to play like a movie in his sub-consciousness when he dreams. While the novel explored a variety of themes such as that of morality, isolation, social class, guilt, manipulation, and the like, the link between beauty and terror is what Atsumu finds himself particularly drawn to. 

_Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it._

Atsumu had disagreed, then. Beauty is admiration, he’d written in his essay. It’s the marvel for things that please us, things that we think we are honored to have laid eyes on. Beauty is kissing the feet of a deity, loving a person wholly. It’s bright, and though sometimes you have to shield your eyes to keep from being blind, it is not terror still. Terror is darkness and the creaking of your bones as they stumble under your weight. Terror makes your heart stop, makes you want to never have been born.

You do not shy away from beauty, you revel in it.

But he is not so certain now, as he looks down at Kiyoomi’s sleeping form, if the two are as far apart as he’d thought.

He’d woken up with Kiyoomi’s arms around him, resting his limbs on the curves of Atsumu’s waist, gentle but urgent, as if he were a sinner and Atsumu his salvation, their faces so close they could almost kiss, if Atsumu leaned forward. He had untangled his body from Kiyoomi’s, then, careful not to wake him.

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory,” Tartt had written. “Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”

It’s not that he is terrified of Kiyoomi — far from it. He looks timeless in his slumber, steadfast in his wakefulness. And it is this unearthly beauty, the ageless manner with which he looks, that unnerves something in Atsumu. Unsettling him, the way one’s instincts would alert them of an impending doom. Perhaps it is not terror, but it’s something along the lines of it.

Are beauty and terror, then, not unlike humility and hubris, which coexist but are apart?

He does not realize that he is still staring until Kiyoomi shifts in his sleep, turning away from Atsumu, back facing him. 

_Oh._

It hits him the same way the threat of mortality crushes a middle-aged man: heavy, bone-crushing, and sudden. He thinks of one of the Titans in the Ancient Greek stories, Atlas, who was condemned to hold up the sky for eternity, and thinks of how this sensation might not be so different. The weight of the realization almost makes him sink to his knees.

So this is what it all means.

The warmth in his chest, the pull he has not felt for a long time, the perturbation he senses along with it — they all point to one thing, which in turn can be expressed in different words. Affection, fondness, liking. Something along the lines of love, but not quite. Not yet.

He holds the nightstand for support, suddenly feeling dizzy. He inhales, gathering his strength, and decides to take a shower in an attempt to clear his mind. He does not know what to make of this realization, does not know how to feel about it. He had spent an ample amount of time denying what had been right in front of him, refusing to acknowledge the truth and instead blaming it on the close proximity, the lack of distance, the living underneath the same roof. 

The shower, however, does not have the intended effect, because when he steps out of the bathroom, clean and fully dressed, the tangled knots in his mind still have not come undone.

“You’re up,” he observes, seeing Kiyoomi sit up on the bed, rubbing his eyes drowsily. 

“Good morning,” Kiyoomi says.

When he had not known yet what his feelings meant, this simple greeting would not have startled him. But it does now. He stumbles on thin air, nearly tripping, and rights himself. “Good morning,” he replies with a cough, hurriedly running out the room to check on their guests.

Koutarou and Kenma are still asleep, but Keiji is already awake and freshly-bathed when Atsumu descends from the stairs. He is in the kitchen, eating a hearty breakfast that he seemed to have prepared himself. Atsumu opens his mouth to apologize for having left him to his devices, but he only shakes his head, waving Atsumu over.

“They must really have been exhausted, seeing as they are still knocked out,” Atsumu comments, referring to the other two in the living room.

Keiji shrugs. “They sleep like the dead.” His glasses are resting on the table, beside the mug of coffee he'd concocted, and Atsumu can see that they are gunmetal blue, the dull, grayish kind of cerulean that oddly reminds Atsumu of rust. Sometimes, though, when he glances up and light shines directly on his eyes, they appear to be a bluish shade of gray. 

Kiyoomi joins them half an hour later, the disorientation from having woken up washed away by his morning bath. “Good morning,” he says, and Atsumu can't bring himself to look him in the eye. 

The one by one rise of the house's inhabitants is like a domino effect. Not long after Kiyoomi, Koutarou follows, and soon so does Kenma. They are gathered around the dining table, breaking their fast and participating in small talk. 

Unsurprisingly, Koutarou's energy has returned, despite having only woken up, and he is chatting away about their adventures in London. He shows them the pictures Keiji had taken, boasting about the photographer's innate skill to give life to two-dimensional pockets of frozen time. 

And indeed, the images are phenomenal. Some are of Koutarou doing fun, dynamic poses in loud, colorful settings. Others are story-tellers, invoking imaginative plots from the viewer's mind within the small frame of the camera. 

“It helps that you are a good model, Bokuto-san,” Keiji says, taking small sips of his coffee. 

Kenma makes sparse comments about how the weather has cleared — something Atsumu had not realized until he'd pointed it out — and that they'll have to head out soon. 

Atsumu takes his speech as a sign that he is "unfurling", as Kiyoomi had put it, and he momentarily forgets about his morning epiphany, elbowing his husband and wiggling his eyebrows. 

“That is not your doing,” Kiyoomi argues. “He is with friends, so it is easier for him to make conversation.”

“Doesn't make it any less of a win,” he says smugly. 

Once all is said and done, they haul themselves back in the car, Atsumu volunteering to man the wheel again so he would have to focus on the road instead of Kiyoomi sitting beside him. 

Koutarou's mouth does not seem to run out of steam, because even when they are on the road, he still has more stories to tell, which, had it been any other person, Atsumu would have minded, but Koutarou has a manner of speaking that draws attention, coaxes your consciousness to the sound of his voice, and you just can't _not_ listen to him speak, not when he is so passionate and energetic. Atsumu entertains him as he drives, partly to have something to say so his mouth will not dry up from the thought of Kiyoomi's closeness, and mostly because Koutarou expects a participative audience, which he gladly provides with his commentary. 

“The cultural difference is so shocking,” Koutarou rants. “At least, to me it was. Akaashi and Kenma acted like they'd been there before, but it was my first time, and it's all so strange to me!” He has his own way of saying Keiji's name that is different every time, but still so distinct that you can tell it's his doing. It has something to do with the way he lets the second syllable roll on his tongue, Atsumu guesses. Sometimes it's a little exaggerated; long and stretched like rubber. Other times it's rapid, almost melting into the third. 

“Isn't it weird how we all live on one planet, but we have different lifestyles, different languages, different cultures?” Atsumu questions. “Social mores vary from one place to another, and we even think each other odd because of this!”

“How does he know the right things to say to incite Bokuto-san's enthusiasm?” he hears Keiji whisper to Kiyoomi. 

“I haven't the slightest clue,” Kiyoomi says. “And frankly I'm a little horrified I ever allowed them to meet.” 

“There's no stopping them now,” Kenma mutters. 

“Right?” Koutarou says to Atsumu, waving his hand excitedly. “That’s what I've been thinking! How odd that the same species have vastly different customs. And how do they even come up with this stuff? It's all so fascinating, really.”

“And quite alarming too, no?” prompts Atsumu. “It’s disorienting, the initial exposure to the cultural difference. Like, when you fly out of your home to a different country, and you forget, at first, that they do not practice the same things as you, and what’s normal for them might not be for you. And suddenly they are doing things you don't understand, like leaving their shoes on when they climb on their bed. How outrageous, you think. But they do not seem to mind.” 

“Yeah! Exactly!” 

The last time Atsumu had been in the Sakusa household was when Kiyoomi dragged him around on his twenty-fifth birthday last month, and even though he'd barely been here before other than that instance, coming back after a while still felt a bit like coming home. 

Ryuga greets them on the stairs that lead to the front doors of their mansion. A couple of attendants scurry to retrieve their luggage from the trunk of the car, and Ryuga tells them to bring their stuff to the guest rooms. 

“You are here only for a short while, correct?” Ryuga says pleasantly, inviting them to sit once they arrive at the living room. “I hear Kou-chan's mother is expecting him in China.”

“Yes, you are not mistaken, sir,” Keiji says smoothly. “Bokuto-san has Japanese magazines clambering over to get an interview with him and Azumane-kun after the huge success of their fashion exhibit in Paris. A few days back home should suffice. We thank you for your hospitality.” 

“Nonsense. It's a pleasure to have you home,” Ryuga says waving his hand. “And don’t be so formal with me, Keiji. It's as if I'm a stranger! Do not forget that I carried you in my arms when you were a small child.” 

“Asahi couldn't come,” Koutarou interjects, “so here I am! And I brought the world famous Kodzuken along! You had always been so fond of him when we were younger.” 

“Ah yes, I've heard of your growing popularity as a — what's the word — streamer?” Ryuga says. “Though I'm afraid I know next to nothing of that field. Nevertheless, I'd always known you were a bright boy, so when you said you wanted to explore your passion instead of inheriting the family business, I knew you would not disappoint. And now here you are!” Ryuga beams. “How the three of you have grown since I last saw you.” 

Atsumu feels Kiyoomi stiffen beside him, making him raise an eyebrow questioningly. He opens his mouth to ask, but the words die on his tongue when Kiyoomi relaxes again. 

“It’s nothing.”

“Make yourselves at home,” Ryuga tells them. He turns to Atsumu and Kiyoomi. “You two _must_ stay for dinner!” he insists. “It’s been a while since we've shared a meal.” 

Atsumu smiles, nodding in affirmation, but when Ryuga's back is turned, he murmurs to Kiyoomi, “All this talk of meals warps my perception of our everyday life. It seems to me that all we do now is eat.” 

“I hear you,” says Kiyoomi, pressing his lips together. He seems anxious, for some reason, craning his neck around discreetly, as if he were looking for something he isn't supposed to. 

“What’s wrong?” Atsumu asks. 

“Nothing, I just—” He stops himself. “Nothing.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Contrary to popular belief, there really is not much of anything of interest in a wealthy businessman's mansion, especially when the rest of the house's inhabitants are either long gone with their own families, or adults with no time to waste on rooms specifically tailored for recreational activities. Sure, the mansion itself looks extravagant and expensive, but really, it's just that. One would, perhaps, expect a, say, home theater or a game room, with all the arcade-esque paraphernalia one can utilize for personal entertainment. Maybe even, at least, a personal library of sorts, where books are stacked on one table, piling high like skyscrapers, or arranged in orderly rows on shelves mimicking well-maintained teeth. 

The Sakusas have no such things. All business, no party. 

The only thing remotely interesting in their home is the hall resembling a mini art gallery, walls lined with authentic oil on canvas paintings, each framed with gilded wood. Under each canvas is a card, bold letters depicting the piece title, and underneath in smaller letters, the painter’s name.

Lacking artistic specialization, Atsumu doesn’t know how to interpret art, but he does acknowledge that they are pleasing to his eyes. The cards also tell him that all paintings are Sakusa-made, and this information allows him to notice a pattern: the loud, vibrant picturesque paintings of natural landscapes and scenery with the occasional silhouette of a couple holding hands are made under the name of Sakusa Akari, while the darker abstract paintings are made by Sakusa Reo. At the farthest end of the hall are two strikingly different (in style) pictures hung next to each other, only a few inches of space between them. They seem to be two parts of a whole: one is of the moon and the tips of someone’s fingers stretching to touch it in a surrealist style, while the other is an impressionist-style depiction of someone’s arm, rising from the sea, water rippling around it, picking up where the other painting left off. There are no cards underneath the two paintings.

“Your siblings sure are artistically-inclined,” Atsumu comments.

The other three are in the sitting room, talking about their scheduled itinerary for the next few days, so it’s just the two of them here. (Much to Atsumu’s initial distress. But Kiyoomi had proceeded as if Atsumu had no internal struggles to deal with involving his dick and his heart, so it turns out that Atsumu had nothing to worry about, after all, the familiar chemistry resurfacing between them the moment they were alone.)

“There was a time when they would not stop sketching and translating their pencil drawings to painted pictures,” Kiyoomi says. “It was like they had all these worlds inside them that just couldn’t wait to be welcomed to our own.” He knocks on the wall beside one of the illustrations. “They still paint, of course. Given their enthusiasm I doubt art is something they can ever let go of, but not so much these days, I'm afraid, with their families and work and all.”

“What’s the story on those two?” Atsumu nods to the ones hung on the farthest end of the hall, the ones of the moon and the hand reaching for the sky.

“Father and I made those,” Kiyoomi confesses quietly, “sometime after my mother died.”

“Oh,” is all Atsumu can say. He tries again, but all he can think to say is, “It’s beautiful.”

Kiyoomi’s lips quirk upwards. “You think? That’s my first time, and probably the last. I had a reference, but I didn’t really know what I was doing.”

“Don’t we all?” Atsumu says. “I’m pretty sure not even the best of the best would know what they’re actually doing, but that doesn’t discredit their work, does it?”

“True,” Kiyoomi concedes, leaning on the wall and folding his arms over his chest. His gaze on Atsumu is intense, but it is not with the burn of hatred like it had been months prior, but rather with the flame of interest, of curiosity. It’s clear that he’s thinking of something, but Atsumu can’t read him well enough to know what’s on his mind. He tilts his head, still not breaking eye contact.

The sheer intimacy of his stare stirs something in Atsumu. Something like the mixture of nervous and feral energy. He shivers, his toes curling. He can almost hear his heartbeat in his ears, loud and ringing. Anticipation (for something) bubbles in his gut, and he doesn’t like where his thoughts are going, so he stops his gaze from dropping to Kiyoomi’s lips and says, “What?”

Kiyoomi hums, uncrossing his arms. “Nothing,” he says. “I was just thinking…”

“Of?” Atsumu prompts, but is met with only a shake of the head.

“Never mind,” Kiyoomi says. He clears his throat and stands straighter, and the tension in the air is gone. Atsumu’s muscles relax, and his chest isn’t as tight.

There’s a taste of disappointment on his tongue, though, somehow salty and bitter at the same time, and Atsumu doesn’t want to acknowledge where it’s stemming from. (Images flash in his head for a quick few seconds, before he forcefully exiles them: long fingers dancing on his skin, hot breath fanning on his neck. A kiss. A name.)

“I thought he was here,” Kiyoomi says as he walks and Atsumu follows.

“What?” comes Atsumu’s confused reply.

“Earlier, when you asked me if something was wrong.” Kiyoomi leads him to the balcony, where the air is fresh and there are chairs to sit on. “I was looking for him, because I thought he was here.”

“Who?” Atsumu asks.

Kiyoomi flashes him an irritated look, annoyed that Atsumu hadn’t caught on, and that he had to say it out loud for him to understand. “Ushiwaka,” he says.

“Ah.” Atsumu doesn’t know what he’s feeling, but it’s not pleasant, something like a discomfort, an unease. It’s not unbearable either, a pinprick to his heart, an ant bite, a needle to his skin, so he doesn’t mind it as much. “You still haven’t gotten over him?”

“It’s not like that,” says Kiyoomi. He hesitates, unsure of how to proceed. “I don’t want to see him,” is what he decides on. “And if he were here, I would very much prefer not to be caught by surprise.”

“Okay,” says Atsumu with a nod. “You don’t have to explain, you know, it’s not like I care or anything.” He laughs nervously, making Kiyoomi raise an eyebrow. “I mean, of course I care; you’re my friend, but you know—”

Kiyoomi reaches out, placing his forefinger on Atsumu’s lips, hushing him. “You talk too much,” he mumbles, amused. 

“Is speaking a crime now?” Atsumu snaps to hide his embarrassment, pushing Kiyoomi’s hand away. He wrinkles his nose, turning his head slightly to the other direction, eyes everywhere but on Kiyoomi. He feels silly, like a bumbling pubescent teenager, but try as he might, he just can’t seem to put a lid on his edginess. He swallows thickly. Silly little Atsumu and his silly little feelings, he thinks glumly.

“I suppose it is, if you’re the criminal,” Kiyoomi says thoughtfully.

“Fuck you.”

“Is that an invitation?” Kiyoomi wiggles his eyebrows, making Atsumu crack up.

“Calm down, loverboy, when did you get so bold?” he jokes. “This is the character development I never thought I needed.”

Kiyoomi shrugs. “The internet told me that flirting helps spice up your marriage,” he informs dutifully with a meaningful nod.

“Oh?” Atsumu plays along. “Are you trying to say that our marriage has gone stale?”

“No, of course not!” Kiyoomi exclaims, playing the part of a horrified lover. “There’s never a dull moment with you, my love.”

Atsumu recognizes this moment as a charade, a playful joke between two friends. This is nothing but another round of their usual comical witticism, he knows. This is not unfamiliar territory. This is almost routine and ritual, but God— he cannot help the way his cheeks start to bloom with heat, the way his heart drums in unflattering rhythms, the way his palms become clammy and twitchy.

There’s a specific word for this feeling in Filipino, he recalls. _Kilig._ Kilig is the stupid butterflies in his belly. Kilig is the embarrassing thoughts in his head about him and Kiyoomi, scenarios that are unlikely to happen, but he imagines them anyway. Kilig is the force that freezes him in place, makes his mind go blank in stupefying elation, makes him lose control over his mouth. 

He is spared from the further humiliation that his nonsense babbling would bring when Koutarou appears in the doorway behind them and calls, “There you two are!” He turns his head, presumably to address the other two. “Hey, I found them!”

“Did you need something?” Atsumu says quickly, cracking his knuckles just to have something to do with his hands.

“Yeah,” Koutarou says with a nod. “We were given snacks; we thought you might want some.” When he advances, Atsumu notices that he is carrying a thick green book in his hands.

“What’s that?” he asks, pointing at the book with his chin.

Koutarou looks down. “Oh, this?” He raises the book, a lopsided grin on his face.

“Good Lord, why do you have that?” Kiyoomi hisses, his face morphing into a look of disgust.

“Why?” Atsumu presses, thrill pulsing in his veins, replacing his earlier shame. Based on the book’s appearance and Kiyoomi’s reaction, Atsumu can gather that it must be something personal to Kiyoomi. A photo album, perhaps? “What is it?” he asks again.

“Kiyoomi-kun’s childhood photos!” Koutarou exclaims happily. “I thought you might want to laugh at him with me.”

“How very considerate of you,” Kiyoomi mutters distastefully, but doesn’t make a move to stop them, which Atsumu takes as an OK sign.

“Sit,” Atsumu says eagerly, gesturing to one of the empty chairs.

Koutarou drags one of the seats closer to where Atsumu is sat as the other two come walking in, Kenma focused on his handheld gaming device while Keiji watches and ensures that Kenma doesn’t hit his head on a wall.

They pore over the pictures; Koutarou telling Atsumu the stories behind some of them, Atsumu elbowing Kiyoomi as he laughs at Koutarou’s vigorous storytelling. At some point, Keiji and Kenma start to listen in, adding in some of the stories they’re familiar with, while Kiyoomi sits back, pursing his lips as if he can’t decide whether to laugh along or cringe at himself. 

“Aw, tiny Omi-omi in his little astronaut suit,” Atsumu cooes.

Kiyoomi sniffs. “That’s an Extravehicular Mobility Unit for you.”

“Eh.” Atsumu makes a face. “It doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

As the hours pass, the pages on one side of the album start to thin, directly proportional to the number of chips on the bowl Keiji had brought with him. With these, the sun also moves westward, beginning its nightly descent. 

“I can’t believe I got you to see Kiyoomi’s old pictures unscathed,” remarks Koutarou as he closes the book shut. “He didn’t even put up a fight!”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes. “It’s just Atsumu,” he says, picking at a lint on his shirt.

Atsumu blinks. “I don’t know if that was meant to be insulting or endearing, but I’m gonna pretend it’s the former to spare my feelings.”

“What an odd love language,” Kenma mutters, taking a swig of canned beer.

“Not really,” says Keiji with a teasing smile. “I know many couples who like to tease each other the way Kiyoomi and Atsumu do as a means of showing their affection.”

Atsumu would be lying if he said he hadn’t heard them. He had, but he absolutely refuses to react, fearing that acknowledging their comment about him and Kiyoomi being a “couple” would make him spiral into yet another humiliating, babbling mess. He fears, even, that he might forget how to control his limbs.

He can usually tell whenever someone is talking about him, and his ears are especially vigilant in catching the sound of his name escaping someone’s mouth in a poorly concealed whisper. He’d grown used to being talked about. He’d been born on a pedestal after all, born under the shine of the limelight, so this is not something that is unfamiliar to him. Habituation breeds adaptability; growing accustomed to being the talk of the town has also honed his skill to ignore such whispers. 

They say practice makes perfect. Everyday had been practice for him, and so keeping up the pretense that his life is not something people gossip about became easy for him.

But life does not always work that way. It is not a simple sequence of crossroads with choices that are as distinctive as black and white. There are other paths present, other people and circumstances, other variables that affect the way the situation plays out. When your survivability depends on the pretense of being blissfully oblivious, your skill alone will not carry you out of the line of fire unharmed. You must also take into account human intervention.

Exhibit A: Koutarou had also heard Keiji’s comment and is now insisting that he _must_ hear the story of how Atsumu and Kiyoomi met. “Speaking of,” he says, “care to share your story?” He grins, eyebrows bouncing up and down on his forehead. “I _must_ know how you two met, how you fell in love, and all that cute stuff. I’ve been telling stories all day; now’s your turn!”

And because life is still, in its basic form, merely a series of events, here comes exhibit B: Kenma also hops in and admits that he, too, is curious about how their love came to be. “I must confess that I, too, am mildly interested to hear about this story,” he says. “I never thought Kiyoomi might fall for another man, seeing as he’d been so smitten with—” He coughs. “Sorry, is that a sore subject?”

To top it all off, Akaashi Keiji, being Akaashi Keiji, grins, clapping his hands once, threading his fingers together. “Hear, hear!” he exclaims, moving closer to Atsumu and Kiyoomi, as though they are about to let him in on a forbidden secret.

Atsumu glances nervously at Kiyoomi, who, to his astonishment, does not seem to be bothered at all. “Must we really do this?” he asks, almost bored, and Atsumu can’t tell if it’s merely a front, or if he simply cannot care less.

The three nod, Kenma slightly more disinterested than the others.

Atsumu sighs, an idea forming in his head. “Go on, then, dear husband,” he says cheekily, winking discreetly at Omi, who shoots him an irritated look.

“It’s not a very riveting story, if that’s what you wanted to know,” Kiyoomi warns, perhaps to make them back off, but they remain undeterred. He releases a breath. “Alright then. Well, a couple of months back, our companies were to undergo a merger. That’s how we met.”

“I should have known you hadn’t actively sought him yourself,” comments Koutarou. “That’s not really your style.”

“No,” Kiyoomi agrees. “You got that right. Anyway, we met over dinner with our families. He asks me out, and it starts from there.”

Atsumu is appalled at the insinuation that he was the one who’d initiated a relationship between them, but he’d basically given Kiyoomi the freedom to make up whatever bullshit story to convince his friends, so he’d had that coming. “At first,” he interjects, “he was very difficult, kept claiming that nothing’s ever going to happen between him and me. But of course, seeing as I am beautiful and flawless and hilarious, he ate his words in the end and fell for me.”

“Sure,” Kiyoomi says drily.

“It’s true!” Atsumu says, nodding eagerly. He leans closer, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper for dramatic effect. “If I’m not mistaken, and I usually am not, he even told me that he wouldn’t even treat me as a friend.”

“Not this again,” groans Kiyoomi as Koutarou gasps in outrage.

“And now here we are,” Atsumu says, pleased at himself.

“I’m surprised you even managed to look the other way before he finally won you over,” Keiji says to Kiyoomi. “I didn’t think even you could resist his charm.” He looks at Atsumu meaningfully, then back at Kiyoomi. “I mean, he is very charismatic.”

Atsumu knows this very well. Just as he’d learned to ignore people when they whisper about him, he’d also taught himself the art of beguiling, learned the inner workings of humans so he knows how to use them to his advantage. He learned to present himself the way the person before him would want to see. There’s a reason why his father sends him to sweet talk other company CEOs. He learned the art, knew how to wield it as a weapon when necessary. 

But when you’ve been pretending for most of your life, sometimes you forget where the act ends and the truth begins. Sometimes the pretense bleeds into your skin, leaks out in unplanned moments like instinct. 

So even though he doesn’t mean to, every so often, his ingrained obligation to please people, to reel them in, is activated, usually when he’s with people he had just met.

“Right?” he says. He turns to address Kiyoomi. “They say that in every group of friends, there is always the black sheep within the crowd of intellectuals. You must be the black sheep of this one, seeing as you are the only one who refuses to acknowledge my oozing charisma.”

“Fuck you,” says Kiyoomi.

Atsumu gathers the courage, not wanting to pass up the opportunity. “Is that an invitation?” He expects another look of mock annoyance. Maybe a sigh, or a roll of the eyes. He gets, instead, a dazzling grin. He nearly chokes on his spit, heat creeping up from his neck.

“I walked right into that, didn’t I?” Kiyoomi says with a laugh. (God, he looks so beautiful when he laughs.) “Okay, okay, I’ll give you that one.”

“Kiyoomi-kun is admitting defeat?” Koutarou bellows. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Momentous and unprecedented,” Keiji teases.

“I’m glad to have been part of this historical event,” Kenma says. “Atsumu-san, how magnificent a man you must be, to have changed Kiyoomi-kun by this much.”

“Why are we even friends?” Kiyoomi sighs.

Kiyoomi is freed from being made fun of even more when a man comes to inform them of Ryuga’s summons. “He says it’s dinner time, sir,” he informs them.

Koutarou blinks. “Wow,” he says loudly. “I hadn’t even realized how late it had gotten.”

Indeed. When they finally stand and take a look around, the sun had completely set, leaving them under a dark blue sky, save for the small bubble of yellowish light emitting from a nearby bulb surrounding them. They follow Kiyoomi through the hallways until they finally reach the dining room, where Ryuga is waiting for them at the head of the table.

Wordlessly, they fall into formation, taking their respective seats. Ryuga asks them about their day; how’s it going, how’s it been, tell me about your travels, are you comfortable in your stay here so far? It’s not awkward, much to Atsumu’s relief, but it’s not the same easy exchange between a couple of friends. This is stiffer, more formal, perhaps because Ryuga seems more tired tonight, try as he might to hide it and be more approachable.

Atsumu almost asks him how it’s been, being a public servant, but he bites his tongue, figuring that Ryuga would probably appreciate it if the conversation strayed away from politics, judging by the dark circles under his eyes.

It’s late by the time they finish the special ten course meal, and Atsumu is immensely grateful for the mealtime chat, otherwise he would have eaten without pacing himself, resulting in a stomach so full he can barely breathe before he’s gotten to the second main course.

“You two can stay here for the night,” Ryuga offers, “since it’s nearly midnight. Though you’d have to share Kiyoomi’s old room since the other three are already occupying the spare rooms. That is alright, I assume?”

Atsumu yawns behind his hand as Kiyoomi voices their affirmation, bidding his father good night. He leads Atsumu upstairs, and in his contentment, it doesn’t immediately register to Atsumu that he’ll be sleeping on the same bed as the man he just recently realized he had romantic feelings for.

It only dawns on him when he wakes up at three in the morning, after everyone in the household had already fallen asleep, and finds that Kiyoomi’s arms are around him, locking him in an embrace that feels so damn good Atsumu can melt into it, his corporeal form dissolving in Kiyoomi’s strong arms.

“Fuck,” he whispers to himself, voice lost in the devil’s hour. “I’m so fucked.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  


Change is the nature of life. Ironically, it is the only constant thing in this world. Before the theorized Big Bang, there had been nothing, and then there is the universe. Prokaryotes were the first forms of life on earth, and the billions of years of evolution that followed brought forth botanical miracles and other more complicated and sentient beings like animals and, of course, humans. And even then, evolution marches forward unceasingly, altering behaviors and characteristics, improving critical thinking. And before long, humans are out here, taking the world by a storm, creating civilizations and societal norms and concepts. Helping each other. Killing each other.

Change is everlasting. It never stops, never relents. It is sensitive, too, like a privileged man who does not want to acknowledge his privilege because it means he has to do something about it. It does not take much to be a catalyst of change. The most miniscule of factors can prove to be the tremendous force that marks the beginnings of a historical chain of events. The staggering miracle of the present: in the moment, you would not even realize that you are at the turning point of something great, until you look back and see how far you’ve come.

Likewise, Atsumu does not know when their sharing of the bedroom had become an every night thing. It had been an unspoken agreement. Something that just happened. At first, Atsumu had climbed under the sheets to escape the cold of the winter, to run from the absence of the summer sun. And when Kiyoomi does not present an excuse of his own, he does not question it.

It just happened.

In the weeks that have come and gone, Atsumu has gradually come into terms with his feelings, has gotten comfortable with the butterflies in his stomach, the _warmth_ , though he has also decided that he does not want this to be known. He will keep this to himself until it goes away, which at first he thinks is silly since they are married, but their marriage is not founded on love, so there is no guarantee that it will evolve, like life, or even last, like change.

But this does not mean that his feelings are ceasing. One might say that it has turned to love. (Or something.)

Everyday he feels it grow stronger, the yearning in his chest becoming more desperate with each passing hour. It is like smoke: it will find cracks in the barriers, longing to be free, to be released. Wisps of it sometimes manifest in his eyes when they are alone, thoughts of Kiyoomi will bedevil his mind at work, or in a stranger’s bedroom when they take him home from the noise of the bar. 

He had not known how much of a torture it is to hold someone every night, only to be unable to touch them as your heart desires. 

And he thought loving someone in secret was the most painful experience he’d ever go through in his lifetime. Turns out the yearning for someone living within the same four walls hurts more if they are so out of reach.

He steps into the room with a sigh, shirt dripping wet.

Kiyoomi raises an eyebrow from his place on the bed, looking up from his phone. “What happened to you?” he asks.

Atsumu pulls his shirt over his head, squeezing it dry on the bathroom sink. “You know when you hold a spoon under running water and you turn it the wrong way?” he muses as he steps out of the bathroom and rummages the closet for a shirt. “That, but add in accidentally breaking the faucet, and you’ll get the picture.”

“How do you even accidentally break a faucet?” Kiyoomi asks, lips quirking up.

He looks up, hands on his hips. “The water from the spoon hit my face, and I had my eyes closed, trying to turn the tap off. I think you can imagine what happens next.”

Kiyoomi eyes him, and he remembers with a jolt that he is shirtless. Feeling his cheeks heat up under Kiyoomi’s stare, he turns away quickly, and resumes his perusal of the closet.

“You know,” Kiyoomi begins. Behind him, Atsumu can hear the rustling of the sheets; Kiyoomi is getting up from the bed. “I don’t know if you’re doing this on purpose, Atsumu, but you’re driving me fucking insane.”

Atsumu winces, biting his lip. Fuck, what is it now? Without turning to face Kiyoomi, he asks, “What are you talking about?”

He feels Kiyoomi move to stand beside him, but he does not dare look up, pretending to be engrossed in looking for a shirt to wear. He can feel his heart rate increasing in speed, his hands shaking slightly. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What the hell is Kiyoomi doing?

“Look at me,” Kiyoomi says softly.

And Atsumu does, despite himself.

There is that intense look in Kiyoomi's eyes again, a strange fire that makes the hairs on Atsumu's arm stand, sends a shiver down his spine. “Can I kiss you?” Kiyoomi whispers, breathless, and Atsumu doesn’t answer. He only surges forward, capturing Kiyoomi’s lips in his, unable to suppress the small whimper that finds its way in his throat, his earlier quest forgotten as weeks of repressed desire and lust power him to peel Kiyoomi’s clothes off his body.

There is nothing graceful about their copulation. It is a battle still, a conquest, to occupy as much of the other as they can, to pull him close in a rather barbaric manner. All sensible thinking gone in a flurry of motions. It is as if the billions of years of human evolution have been stripped away from their genes, leaving them only with primitive want, an animal hunger.

Kiyoomi feels as good as he’d thought, tastes as good as he’d dreamed. Perhaps part of the pleasure is the accumulation of Atsumu’s craving over time, the images his lechery has concocted to keep his mouth watering with thirst, finally coming to fruition. 

“How could you,” Kiyoomi growls holding Atsumu’s sides as he thrusts violently, “prance around half naked and expect me not to give in?”

Atsumu moans, gripping the sheets. Kiyoomi is merciless, the bed creaking in ways it should not have been, had he been more gentle, but Atsumu does not complain, taking it all in relish, back arched low. He grips his own dick, stroking it as Kiyoomi continues to rock him. He cannot keep his eyes from rolling up, his mouth from hanging open. He cannot keep the whimpers from escaping his mouth, cannot keep from panting Kiyoomi’s name.

“Do you know,” Kiyoomi continues to huff over Atsumu’s moans, “how long I’ve been holding this in?” He pushes Atsumu’s hand away, taking control over Atsumu’s front as well as his behind, hips rocking almost furiously.

“Oh... yeah...?” Atsumu manages to gasp out as he falls completely under Kiyoomi’s control. “You’re… not the… only one…”

Something in him tightens and loosens, the release taking the shape of a grayish white liquid on their sheets. Kiyoomi pulls out abruptly, turning Atsumu over with a single rough push, prying his legs open and pressing his mouth on his as he holds both their lengths with his long fingers, rubbing them together. His mind seems to work in a million different branches, his hands and mouth having a consciousness of their own, working on different things at the same time and doing a very good job of not giving Atsumu room to breathe.

Fucking hell, Atsumu thinks, all senses rendered useless underneath Kiyoomi’s body. How much practice has this guy had? He’s rough and savage in his movements, sure, every sweep of his palms thick with raw fervor, but he does it in a way that is masterful, experienced. He holds Atsumu with a surety that in itself makes Atsumu hard all over again. He knows exactly where Atsumu wants to be touched, knows how hard he can push Atsumu without needing to ask, as if he'd practiced this night a billion times over in his mind, watched it play out, memorized every single step. 

If this is what sex with Kiyoomi feels like, dear heavens, why aren’t his past partners worshipping the ground he walks on, building shrines to his name? 

Atsumu doesn’t know how long they’ve been going at it, only that his legs will not be able to carry his weight the next day.

They hit the pillows with a soft thud, all their pent up flames finally exhausted and diminished into still-hot coals. Dimly, he wonders what time it is. 

“Is this what you had always wanted, then?” Atsumu mumbles weakly against Kiyoomi’s chest. He is referring to the sex, but does not mention it outright, as if apprehensive that the magic might break, and Kiyoomi would then realize that it had been a mistake, a moment of weakness.

Atsumu‘s eyes are drooping, and still Kiyoomi does not reply. He shrugs it off, assuming that Kiyoomi has fallen asleep when he hears a low rumble that sounded suspiciously like a “No.” He feels a twinge of hurt in his chest, and suddenly he wishes that he’d never spoken at all. It claws at him, like thorny vines making a necklace around his throat, choking the life out of him mere minutes after he’d had one of the most brilliant nights of his fucking life.

He wants to laugh. A giggle at a goddamn funeral. Did he seriously think Kiyoomi wants him the way he wants Kiyoomi? What an absolute fool.

But he does not recoil from the embrace, does not push Kiyoomi back, does not howl in his anguish. Is this what Kiyoomi had felt, he wonders tiredly, when he had to settle with having a no-strings-attached, purely sexual relationship with the love of his life? 

He falls asleep, nursing the ache in his chest by doing what he always did: pretending. Pretending that Kiyoomi’s arms will hold him forever, not just tonight. Pretending that when he wakes, he will not have to carry a burden that is heavier than before.

  
  
  


💍

_I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen,_

_and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me._

_I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire._

_And then I was a careless fool,_ _and I fell in love with you anyway._

_— Casey McQuiston, Red, White, and Royal Blue_

💍

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


People watching is a favorite hobby of Kiyoomi’s. He finds it interesting how every single human has a life of their own, vivid and complex and churning, just like oneself. Oddly, it is something mentally engaging for him to peer into a moment of someone’s life and forget about his own.

An irony: human behavior is very complex, unique to each one and each circumstance, but it is human nature to be drawn to conformity. (There is a comfort in the knowledge that you are not alone, that there is someone like you in the vast universe.) And though everyone is designed to be one of a kind, to differ from the rest of the flock, in the end, everyone smiles when they are happy, cries when they are sad. When stripped to the very elementary particles that make up a human, each one is made of the same organs, the same bone and sinew.

And so people watching is something Kiyoomi engages in to entertain himself and pass time, because it is not he who initiates, but rather it is he who observes. Because human life is so fickle, so unsurprising and unpredictable all the same. An enigma with layers upon layers of my mysteries.

Today it is Atsumu he rests his eyes upon, cheek against the flat of his knuckles as he watches the other man drive while maintaining a fairly substantial conversation with Koutarou.

“The cultural difference is so shocking,” Koutarou rants, eyes somehow dreamy and excited at the same time, the way Kiyoomi had long since learned meant that he is truly fascinated about the topic. “It’s all so strange to me!”

Kiyoomi keeps his eyes on Atsumu, curious and attentive, though the other man doesn’t seem to notice, having half his mind on the road and the other half on Koutarou. 

“Isn’t it weird,” Atsumu says as he switches lanes, “how we all live on one planet, but we have different lifestyles, different languages, different cultures?” He has a way of making things look easy. Where Kiyoomi is controlled and careful, he is cool and confident. He walks with his arms swinging at his sides, taking everything in stride, every step calm and suave. He drives with his left elbow on the armrest, one hand on the wheel.

“How does he know the right things to say to incite Bokuto-san’s enthusiasm?” Keiji whispers to him from the gap between his seat’s headrest and the car wall, bewildered. It is not uncommon for people to be able to catch up with Koutarou’s nonstop talking, but it is a different matter altogether to be able to perfectly identify the crux of his ideas and know how to handle it. “They haven’t even known each other for long.”

“I haven’t the slightest clue,” Kiyoomi finds himself admitting, unable to keep his eyes off Atsumu. In all the years of Kiyoomi’s people watching, never had he ever encountered someone so fascinating, someone so empathetically clever, yet somehow still slightly callous with his words. “And frankly I’m a little horrified I ever allowed them to meet.”

“There’s no stopping them now,” Kenma mutters.

Is it possible to look at someone and see the heavens? An entire kingdom of sun and light on the crown of a single man’s head. It is moments like these where Kiyoomi is enraptured by Atsumu’s smile that he thinks Atsumu must be a deity, a higher being who bore witness to Kiyoomi’s unrequited devotion and took pity on him, sparing him from further pain through the means of divine intervention. A godly remedy, a cosmic panacea. 

Recently he has noticed that being with Atsumu dulls the sting to a throb, makes it ache a little less. And now he is certain that there is more to it than a mere alleviation of his hurt. Is it love? Possibly not; it is too early to tell. But it is definitely something. Something that makes him see that there is more to life than heartbreak and grappling with the crumbling pieces of his being.

It is warmth, this he knows. A saturated sunflower in the middle of a grayscale garden. It is the heat of a thousand suns and a hundred more from a faraway exoplanet that has not known the radiance of a star in eons. It is a comfort not unlike the feeling of coming home after a year-long crusade around the world. 

How can someone be so captivating but so utterly unaware of the strength of their gravity? 

Kiyoomi knows from the way Atsumu carries himself that he is confident and at ease with himself. But this man, laughably, does not know the effect a single fleeting touch from his fingertip has. He does not know that his power is not limited to turning heads when he walks past. It is something more out of this world, something a mere mortal would not even dream of being able to do. He can bring the earth to its knees, control the waxing and the waning of the moon with a snap of his finger. He is the child of the sun, whose heliosphere encompasses an entire galaxy. Kiyoomi guesses that if he asks the people Atsumu had encountered in his lifetime, they would be willing to offer their lives to him. 

And would Kiyoomi? 

Probably. 

But Atsumu does not need to know that. Otherwise, Kiyoomi would never hear the end of it. (But maybe that is a good thing, so Atsumu would know that he can part the skies with a wave of his hand, move mountains with only his eyes as the sole pushing force.) 

  
  


  
  


  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Atsumu had not anticipated how difficult it would be to distance himself from Kiyoomi. The following morning, when he’d tried to stand, his legs buckled underneath him, and he would have fallen to the floor if Kiyoomi had not been swift to catch him by the arms, his lip quivering with the feeble attempt to keep himself from laughing. 

“Stay here,” he’d said, “I’ll bring you breakfast.”

Atsumu had sat there on the bed, present but also somewhere else, gathering the resolve to push Kiyoomi away without letting him know of the damage he’d caused him. He would not give Kiyoomi the satisfaction of knowing he’d pieced Atsumu with golden seams and took him apart with a single word.

So at night, when Kiyoomi coaxed him to bed, he’d declined, a mournful sorrow taking shape in his chest bubbling just under the epicardium that Atsumu had been worried it might burst out if he weren’t careful. “I have to catch up on work,” he’d said, and went to bed on the pull-out couch.

It is a difficult thing, to disentangle yourself from someone when you are literally shackled into place by a silver band on your finger, and everything else that comes with it. Reasonable in theory, but hellish in practice.

He falls back into a modified version of an old routine; this time only he sleeps on the couch while Kiyoomi takes the bed, by now sensing the growing distance between them, wondering if he had done something to offend Atsumu.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?” Kiyoomi questions one day over a bowl of haphazardly made cereal, looking at him questioningly.

“No,” says Atsumu lightly, bounding up the stairs and entering the bathroom to soak in the bath and escape the conversation.

Atsumu’s saving grace comes in the form of a phone call from his father. “Do you still want to get a divorce?” Isamu asks from the other line. “Or have you grown happy with the way things are?”

Atsumu’s answer, though instant, is not something he’d concluded with a grief-stricken mind, cloudy with dejection, jumping at the first opportunity to be rid of his offender. No; it’s something that had come to him after days of elusion, the inevitable conclusion to his and Kiyoomi’s not-so-love story.

Besides, he’s fairly certain that Kiyoomi, too, wants his freedom back. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said what he had said. Really, he is doing them both a favor. 

There is relief that floods through him, though he does not know if it is genuine, or simply a defense mechanism, something to convince himself that this is truly what he wants.

“Yes, I’ll get a divorce,” he murmurs to the phone, cradling it beside his ear with his palm.

Isamu sighs, as if disappointed, but he does not comment on Atsumu’s decision, does not try to persuade him to stay, which Atsumu is grateful for, because with the right words, he would probably have been convinced. “Alright,” Isamu says, “I’ll arrange dinner with Ryuga so we can talk about it properly.”

“Thank you, father,” Atsumu says, but there is no gratitude in his tone, only hollowness.

He drowns himself in work, finding excuses to avoid staying home as much as he can. “I’m staying over at Osamu’s tonight. I have to help him with something,” he says. “I might be home late,” he says.

One morning Kiyoomi manages to corner him. Atsumu ducks, but Kiyoomi grabs his arm, and the pleading look in his eyes is enough to make Atsumu’s feet freeze in their tracks.

“Talk to me,” he begs. “Are you angry?”

“No,” Atsumu says shortly, shaking Kiyoomi’s grip from his elbow. He crosses his arms over his chest defiantly. 

“Then why do you sleep out here?” Kiyoomi asks. “Why won’t you so much as look at me?”

“Ah, I fell asleep last night watching a show,” Atsumu says, deliberately ignoring the second question. He tries to escape, but Kiyoomi sidesteps to block his path.

“Not just last night,” Kiyoomi insists. 

Atsumu makes a noise of annoyance. “Didn’t I tell you I was busy with work?” he snaps. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere to be.” Without waiting for a response, he walks up the stairs, heart threatening to break out of his ribcage. He wears his usual workplace attire, mind running in a thousand directions at once as he prepares himself for work. On his way out of the bedroom, his phone chimes in his pocket, indicating that he has received a text message.

It’s his father. _Next week_ , is what it says. _Tell Kiyoomi._

Atsumu presses his lips together nervously, before taking a deep breath and heading down the stairs. “Father just texted me,” he says to Kiyoomi. “Says we’ll talk back home next week.”

“Why?” Kiyoomi asks.

Atsumu shrugs. “I don’t know. He didn’t say,” he lies.

Kiyoomi looks like he doesn’t believe him, but he only nods and says, “Okay.”

The days leading to The Confrontation are nerve-wracking, to say the least. Atsumu cannot bear to look at Kiyoomi, for fear that the mentally capable facade he’d conjured for himself might shatter and fall apart, so he spends even less time at home, finding comfort in not having to face his problems for a while.

And all the while, Kiyoomi stares at the ceiling when he should be sleeping, troubled thoughts storming his mind where there should be dreams. He cannot for the life of him figure out what he’d done wrong, if there even is anything he can do to patch the holes and return to the way it was before. 

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  


“Is this what you had always wanted, then?” Atsumu’s voice is muffled against his bare chest. He sounds exhausted, but in a fulfilled kind of way. Triumphant, in a sense, as if he’d finally accomplished something he’d been meaning to for a while. 

Kiyoomi ponders on this question and the implications it carried. This is the simple answer: no, it is not what he had always wanted. A lifetime ago, he’d wanted no one else but Wakatoshi, and it had taken more than his and Atsumu’s first meeting to convince him otherwise. No, it is not what he had always wanted. He wanted out, back then, wanted to run away and forget his responsibilities as his father’s son. He wanted to be loved by the man of his dreams. He wanted to be free.

The more lengthy response: no, it is not what he had always wanted, but it is something he had learned to want along the way. A desire birthed from sheer closeness. It had taken long for him to start seeing Atsumu in his dreams, and even longer for him to realize what it meant. And since then, it had been easy; easy to stare as Atsumu steps out of the bath, towel wrapped around his waist, and let himself think about tearing it off. Easier still to glance at his lips and wonder what he would taste like.

Impulses are difficult to suppress, but Kiyoomi generally has control over his. And sometimes when he fears that he might not be able to keep his hands to himself next time, he comes to a compromise and takes care of it in the bathroom or in bed with a stranger, though his thoughts never stray far from Atsumu’s face and what he would look like with Kiyoomi deep inside him.

“No,” he finally says, but it comes out garbled and indistinguishable. He clears his throat and tries again. “No,” he says. “But it’s something I learned to want along the way.” He goes on to explain, the words coming out of his mouth easier than he’d thought, his free hand stroking Atsumu’s hair as he gets lost in his thoughts. He only comes to a stop when he realizes that Atsumu’s breathing is even, like he is asleep.

Kiyoomi shifts, peering down at Atsumu, who has indeed fallen asleep in the middle of Kiyoomi’s rambling, lips parted slightly.

He smiles softly, pressing his lips on Atsumu’s forehead. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Atsumu does not know what to do with his hands. He places them on the armrests flanking him, tapping his fingers to the beat only he can hear, then he runs his fingers through his hair, chewing nervously on his lower lip, before finally deciding to clasp them together, meeting in the middle.

“Why are you so anxious?” asks Kiyoomi, but he does not answer.

It is quiet in this room, like a vacuum devoid of all sound, swelling and swelling until it consumes them all. The silence is so loud that Atsumu starts to think there is ringing in his ears. Before him and Kiyoomi sits Isamu, lips pressed together, eyes flitting back to his wristwatch every few minutes. The table between them houses four cups of piping hot tea, smoke rising from the mug and disappearing into thin air. Beside Kiyoomi the hearth is aflame, crackling with heat. Atsumu stares at the fire, mesmerized, until an image of Kiyoomi’s face appears in the controlled inferno, nearly making him jump. He blinks, and the image is gone. He looks away, but the damage has already been done. Everywhere he looks, he is reminded of how this had all started, and everything that had led up to this day.

He lets himself glance at Kiyoomi, who is frowning at his polished shoes, as if they’d done something to offend him. He seems to be in deep thought, but Atsumu does not dare ask.

It is quiet here. Too quiet. Atsumu does not think he can take it any longer, try as he might to force his feet in place and keep from standing and walking out of the suffocating room.

Somewhere in his mind, he hears the ticking of a clock, though there is none of that here.

At long last, Ryuga finally arrives, appearing by the doorway, winded, as if he’d only recalled their supposed meeting at the last minute. “Sorry,” he says. “I got caught up at work.”

Isamu waves him over. “Not to worry, my friend. You are just in time.” He pats the seat next to him. “Come sit. I believe it’s best we get through this as quickly as we can.”

“What is ‘this’, exactly?” Kiyoomi interrupts, his frown deepening.

Isamu looks questioningly at Atsumu like _You haven’t told him?_ But Atsumu only looks away, so he does not say anything about it. “Well,” he begins, leaning forward. “Last week, I phoned Atsumu to ask him if he still wants to go through the divorce, and he said yes. So—”

“What?” Kiyoomi asks, his angry frown morphing into confusion. “He agreed to what?”

Atsumu takes a deep breath. “Divorce, Kiyoomi,” he says loudly without looking up. He picks at the armrest just to have something to do with his hands.

Kiyoomi opens his mouth. “I—” He closes it, face hardening. He turns to Ryuga and Isamu. “Can we go talk about this in private for a minute?”

“Of course,” Isamu says, forcing an encouraging smile on his face. He and Ryuga exchange a look.

“Come with me,” Kiyoomi said. There is something in his voice that makes Atsumu’s heart race faster, but not in a good way. Atsumu grumbles in protest, but Kiyoomi hauls him up by the arm so he follows him outside unwillingly. As soon as he closes the door, Kiyoomi demands, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Atsumu cannot bear to look at him, so he doesn’t. He balls his fists at his side, unspeaking.

“Come on, Tsumu,” Kiyoomi pleads. “Is this what the past few days have been about? Is this why you’re avoiding me?” He stretches, planting his hands on either side of Atsumu’s shoulders. He breathes deeply, and Atsumu feels him tremble. “That night,” he tries again, using a hand to guide Atsumu’s cheek so he is looking at Kiyoomi. “Did that even mean anything to you?”

Atsumu swallows thickly, gritting his teeth. “No,” he says, his voice hard and void of emotion. “That was a mistake.”

In the tropical regions, there is a plant that goes by many names. Makahiya. Harupai. Tuntokasvi. Touch-me-not. Scientifically, it is known as the _Mimosa pudica_ , a creeping perennial that is grown for its unique response touch. As a defense mechanism, its compound leaves fold inward and droop when shaken or touched, tucking into itself so it will not be hurt or harmed.

Tonight, Sakusa Kiyoomi is a _Mimosa pudica_ , and Atsumu’s words play the part of the nudge that makes him fold in on himself, shrinking away so as to shield himself from danger. He removes his hands from Atsumu’s shoulders immediately, all the hurt gone from his face in a manner so quick it must have been inhuman. “Oh,” he says coldly, letting out a mirthless laugh. “Okay. Well, thanks for not telling me that sooner and leaving me to believe that it actually fucking mattered to you, when in fact I was just a gullible fool who presumed that you hadn’t just been thinking with your dick.” 

Something in Atsumu starts to burn, erupting in a column of flames like a volcano releasing magma. His eye twitches, and he clenches his fists tighter. “How dare you?” he says angrily. There is no specific word to accurately describe the multitude of emotions Atsumu is feeling right now. _Livid_ might be a close enough term. Is Kiyoomi fucking serious? Is he really going to act like he hadn’t been the one to tell Atsumu that being with him isn’t what he wanted? “You know, Kiyoomi, despite everything, I still think highly of you.” He shakes his head. “I never thought that you of all people would stoop so low and have the fucking _gall_ to play the victim when clearly you’re the one in the wrong.”

But Kiyoomi does not seem to have heard, absorbed in his own hurt. “I actually thought—” he had been saying.

“Thought what?” Atsumu snaps, speaking over Kiyoomi, so the latter would snap out of it and listen to him. “You were the one who fucking told me that it wasn’t what you wanted, goddamit! You don’t get to say all this shit after that. If anything, I should be the one taking my anger out on you!”

Kiyoomi steps back, confused. All the anger drains from his face. “I’m sorry?” he asks, and it clearly is not meant as a sincere apology, so Atsumu doesn’t say anything. Kiyoomi tries again, “What did you say?”

“You told me you didn’t want it,” Atsumu spits out. “How the hell did you expect me to react after that, huh? Get into bed with you the next night like you didn’t just say that?”

“But I never said that!” Kiyoomi shouts. 

“I know what I heard!” Atsumu bellows. “Don’t take me for a fool.”

“No, please,” Kiyoomi says, reaching for Atsumu’s hand, but he pulls it away, allergic to Kiyoomi’s touch. “Listen to me. I swear to you: I mean it with everything I have when I insist that I never said that. You have to believe me.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Atsumu says. “I heard it with my own two ears, I’m sure of it. There’s no goddamn way I’m making this up.”

“I know, Tsumu,” Kiyoomi says, his voice now gentle, which Atsumu does not understand. Did he really not say anything like that? “I know you’re not lying. I believe you. But I know my truth too, so why don’t we talk about it, yeah?” he prompts, trying for a small smile that does not quite reach his eyes. Tentatively, he reaches for Atsumu’s hand again, and this time Atsumu does not pull away. 

“Why are you being nice to me?” Atsumu grumbles.

“You were patient with me back then, remember?” he says. “I think it’s time I do the same for you.” He inhales, a lot calmer now. He is no longer the frightened _Mimosa pudica_ , but rather a familiar pillow that is eager to be sobbed upon, if it meant providing emotional support. “So when did you start to think that I don’t want you?”

Atsumu chews on his lower lip apprehensively. It takes a few long moments for him to start speaking again. “We were in bed,” he says finally. “And I asked you if this is what you had always wanted. And you told me no.”

Kiyoomi frowns, trying to recall. Realization dawns on him later, and he does not know if he wants to cry or laugh. “Oh, Atsumu, you beautiful fucking _idiot_ ,” he says, pulling Atsumu in for a hug, to which Atsumu protests weakly, but does not reject him.

Because Sakusa Kiyoomi is nothing if not warm. His arms feel good around Atsumu’s body, and he can feel tears prickling in the corners of his eyes from the sensation. He had been actively eluding an embrace this _mind-numbing_ for nearly two weeks, and now that he’s trapped in it once again, he cannot bring himself to push Kiyoomi away. He feels as though he can rule the world with these arms for his cloak, and Kiyoomi’s lips pressed on the top of his head for a crown.

“God, I love you.” When Kiyoomi pulls away, he is smiling, eyes glistening, and his voice is so full of emotion that it’s a bit jarring to Atsumu, to find Kiyoomi like this, heart on his sleeve, everything written plainly on his face as if he had nothing to hide from Atsumu, as if he were willing to do something he’d never done before: bare his soul out in the open.

“I— what—?” he starts to say, but Kiyoomi presses his forefinger on Atsumu’s lips to shush him.

“You didn’t hear the rest,” Kiyoomi says. “I said no because it wasn’t what I _always_ wanted, but rather something I realized I did, in fact, want along the way.” He presses his forehead to Atsumu’s, so they are eye-to-eye. “You are the most magnificent man I have ever met. I would be a fool not to want you.”

Atsumu can't decide if he wants to kill Kiyoomi or kiss him. To say that he is speechless would be an understatement. He is absolutely thunderstruck, his tongue tied in a constrictor knot, tightened so it is impossible to undo. He opens his mouth to speak, but his mind cannot seem to grasp the concept of sentence construction, so he closes it.

Kiyoomi pulls away. “Say something.”

But what? What can Atsumu even say to express how _right_ he feels? That he is a solar system and all his planets have aligned? He is a fountain of gratification, his waters overflowing with fulfillment, and he is in love. He is so in love that it hurts, and his head is spinning, and he is laughing.

“I hate you,” he says with all the love that he can manage.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Kiyoomi says. “Let’s not kid ourselves.”

And when they kiss, it is the sweetest thing Atsumu has ever tasted. A paradise fruit — saccharine and honeyed like a sentimental childhood memory. Kiyoomi's lips are soft on his, a gentle drifting cloud in a windless sky. This is not like their first kiss at the altar, which had been obligatory and stiff. And it also is not the same as the one from that lustful night two weeks ago, a rough and desperate warpath. This is slow and all the more passionate. The sort of quiet that is not oppressive, but rather kind. This is leaving the Christmas lights on long after the season is over. This is dancing in the living room at night, with the lights off, music muffled by a pillow tossed haphazardly and landing on the speaker. Falling asleep to the sound of each other's even breathing. Walking on the stars by the sea, the water glowing all around you as you look at each other in the eyes. 

The world is shrouded in bright light when Atsumu opens his eyes. This is what greets him: Kiyoomi looking at him like he is the world, hands cupping either side of Atsumu's face, the sharp tingling on his lips from the kiss, and the breathlessness he feels as his body tries to keep up with his exhilaration. The scene is vivid and beautiful, like his life had been colorless before now. It's almost as though he'd woken up in a world colored by neon phosphorescent paint, saturated and vibrant so there is not one corner devoid of color. 

“You’re impossible,” Atsumu mumbles against Kiyoomi's lips. “Fuck, I'm in love with you.”

“I know,” Kiyoomi murmurs back, and all earlier thoughts of separation are wiped from their minds as they lean forward once again for another kiss. 

  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  


_From:_ Sakusa Kiyoomi < _s.kiyoomi@sksent.co > _

_To:_ Sakusa Atsumu < _atsumu@miyafood.co_ >

 _Date:_ February 14, 2021

 _Subject:_ you are a menace but i love you still

_Why does the sun favor you? We are all made of star matter and space, but it seems that the heart of our solar system has taken quite a liking to you. You glow everywhere you go, a human sun all on your own. You can raze the earth with your heat, but you choose to be kind, or at least put up a front of false serenity. You are glorious, Atsumu, and I'll be damned if I never let you know that._

_I always wanted to be an astronaut when I was a child, traverse the universe like a man on a mission. Now I've married the sun, and I'm the happiest man alive._

_As a child of science, I never believed in the notion that our lives are predestined from birth, that all our choices have been made for us long before we have ever thought of making them. But seeing us as we are now, perhaps it is not so absurd to think that we are connected by this invisible red string of fate, that we are tied to one another by something else other than the silver ring on our finger._

_The younger me would never have thought I would say any of that. He would have been appalled. He was someone who thought Orpheus was a madman for having looked back, thus losing his wife Eurydice for a second time. But he has not met you yet, he has not known devotion. He does not understand what it means to love someone so much you would risk everything just to get a glimpse of them again one more time. Ovid said it better: Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?_

_So the younger me would not understand how you have changed me, you little devil, child of the sun, how you have taught me that sometimes swimming with the stars at sea with someone you love is infinitely better than donning an Extravehicular Mobility Unit and soaring the galaxies all on your own, but frankly I cannot say that I mind the change all that much._

_I know you're sulking because I'm away for a business trip on Valentine's day, so I'm let me tell you this, partly as an attempt to appease you, but mostly because I want you to hear it: I do not regret having fought you before, because if you had not shown me the lengths you are willing to go through to show me that you mean me no harm, I never would have learned that there is more to love than solely wanting, that there are various forms of it, that it takes on so many shapes that you will not recognize it if all your life you've only known the one. With you, I learned that you do not have to fuse yourself with your other half to know what it feels like to be complete and whole. All it takes is a warm hug after a long day, and all will be well._

_There is always a reason for things, as they say, and I would not change a single thing, if it means that the road will always lead me to you. I would let fate ruin me, fuck me over a million little times, as long as I get to hold you in my arms at the end of the day, feel your lips on mine. Explore the ridges of your body, mark the lines with my tongue. Nothing else matters, and as long as I have you, I can take on anything._

_Here's to you and me, my love. Here's to a tale that will never end for as long as the sun still lives._

_Happy Valentine's day. I love you._

  
  
  
  
  
  


💍

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It is during the summer that Atsumu flourishes, and by some predetermined divine will, it is also when the sea blooms with light like the glow of heavenly gates.

It was Kiyoomi who thought to revisit Maldives and “have a proper honeymoon,” as he put it. So they made plans for a vacation in the archipelagic state come summertime, eager to finally get a weekend away. 

“Did you purposely get the same room as the last time for nostalgia or was it just pure luck?” Atsumu teases, eyebrow raised as they begin the trek toward their suite, hand in hand. The cool wind is a mercy from the summer fever, and though their palms start to sweat, they do not let go of each other.

“Pure luck,” Kiyoomi says without missing a beat, pushing open the door to their room.

“Liar,” Atsumu announces, making Kiyoomi grin in submission, which Atsumu takes as a yes.

They leave their stuff in the room, leaving the comfort of the air-conditioner to embrace the summer heat with swimming trunks and unbuttoned shirts. They slather sunscreen on each other’s backs, hiding their eyes behind a pair of sunglasses. Atsumu suggests that they scout the island for signs of the algae, but Kiyoomi shakes his head, pulling Atsumu against his chest, water splashing around them. “We’ll find them tonight,” he murmurs, breath fanning against the back of Atsumu’s neck. “For now let us stay here.”

“Clingy,” Atsumu teases but doesn’t put up a fight. He rests his arms on Kiyoomi’s, leaning back. Together, they look at the horizon, their chests rising and falling at the same time, synchronized and steady like the gentle rocking of the waves. 

Around them, the island is teeming with life: kids chasing each other on the shore, couples holding each other under little parasols, families and friends crowded around their tables, parents looking after their children. Even the animals seem to be enjoying the beach as well. Overhead, flocks of birds encircle the island, flapping their wings to the beat of the wind. Somewhere ahead, in deeper waters, schools of fish are swimming alongside scuba divers, corals and other marine botanical life waving at them as they pass. 

Later tonight, once they’ve had their fill of the ocean, they will eat a hearty meal by the sea and find themselves in the bedroom, hungry for something that is not food, and it will be magical. It will be something that Atsumu had always wanted but never thought he’d had, what with all the secrecy and half-truths. It will be something they’ve always done and more, because here they are free, and here is where dreams come true, in a way that you’d never expect.

“You know, I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to do it in the sea,” Atsumu says, breaking free from Kiyoomi’s embrace to turn and look at him.

“Behave,” Kiyoomi chides.

“What?” Atsumu asks innocently. “It’s just a thought.”

“You can’t be serious,” Kiyoomi says with a deadpan look.

“No, as in we don’t have to do it,” Atsumu says lightly. “And yes, as in it’s a genuine thought that I have.”

“Oh God,” Kiyoomi groans. “It’s bad when you’re actually _thinking_.” Atsumu pouts at this, but Kiyoomi only laughs, pushing a wave of water toward his face. “That doesn’t work on me. Besides, we can go for as long as you want tonight, babe. Patience.”

Atsumu pushes another wave back, sticking his tongue out. 

“You’re going to regret that,” Kiyoomi warns with a sinister smirk, going after Atsumu as he makes a run for it, rushing to the shore where the water won’t slow him down. 

When the sea’s vice-like grip on his legs isn’t as tight, Atsumu pretends to trip and fall. “Oh!” he exclaims, crouching on all fours. “I tripped while a big, scary man was chasing me. Oh no, I’m stuck here! Whatever shall I do?” He shakes his bum in the air for dramatic effect.

“You idiot,” Kiyoomi hisses, though he is red with laughter. “Stand up. People are staring.”

“Let them,” Atsumu says haughtily, picking himself up from the sand. “What was it you told me? That I am the most magnificent man you’ve ever met? Yes, that is correct. So let them ogle at me all they want.”

Kiyoomi shakes his head, a fond smile still plastered on his face. “You truly are something else.”

“Aren’t you glad to have met me?”

“That I am indeed.”

When the sun has finally made way for the moon, they hurry to the more secluded area of the island, away from the rest of the people, their entwined hands swinging between them, the drops of seawater falling from their damp swimming trousers leaving a small trail of water droplets on the sand in their wake. Soon, the familiar jungle foliage is within their line of sight, and they hurry to the area where they had been all those months ago, only to be disappointed when there is only darkness where there should have been light.

“That’s too bad,” Kiyoomi comments, disheartened. “We can try again tomorrow.”

Atsumu shakes his head. “No, wait,” he says, eyeing the scattered, barely noticeable specks of light nearby. “I think there’s something farther up ahead.” Determined, he pulls Kiyoomi along, and they march forward, feet sinking underneath the sand with each step that they take. In the distance, the jungle creatures make noises to indicate their presence, reminding Atsumu and Kiyoomi that they are not alone. 

It gives Atsumu more reason to carry on, continuing forward and occasionally looking back to smile at Kiyoomi reassuringly.

At first, there is nothing. And then there are miniscule trails of radiance floating along the coastline, smoke signals in the form of glowing pinpricks. Atsumu comes to a stop, planting his feet in the sand firmly. He pulls Kiyoomi’s hand, eyes not leaving the scene in front of him, and they watch, enchanted, as one wave after the other brings an ocean of stars by their feet. The poetic push and pull of the tides reminds Atsumu of the way he and Kiyoomi used to be — dark and grim and heated with all the rage of an active volcano — until, gradually, each exchange becomes brighter, less angry and more playful. Until all that is left is a brilliant ocean of stars that cannot be dimmed, cannot be extinguished by anything that is and will be thrown at it. Because it has already learned the sensation of being broken and being made whole again, has written the code to relearn itself in its genes.

And there, in the island where dreams come true the way you least expect it, the sea comes to life before their very eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> i hadn't really planned on starting another project, as i had previously left anime twitter around last year, i think, but come 2021 and i decided to make new account on impulse 😭 and i saw [this tweet](https://twitter.com/_mika60_/status/1352973683577540609?s=19) and thought hey that would be fun to write, so now here we are!
> 
> many thanks to my spite for providing endless motivation 😌 and to my oomfs who are very encouraging, you're the best <3
> 
> come talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/msbykuroo) and [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.qa/oikuroatsu) !
> 
> [if you would like to support me, click here!](https://aftersome.carrd.co)


End file.
